Bright Lights and the Big City
by Chasing Rabbits
Summary: Kenny and Butters find themselves running away from home on the exact same night, at the exact same time, on the exact same bus. Now what?
1. Chapter 1

O hai guys I kind of have **story ADD**. I'm still working on La Cage, but sometimes it benefits me to have more than one project going so... here it goes. Un-beta'd as usual, all errors are mine as usual, I ask you to get over it as usual.

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><p>It wasn't cowardice, no matter what anyone said.<p>

Okay, so no one was saying it was cowardice. Yeah Stan had been a little upset, and Kyle a little shocked, but both were more than their fair share of supportive. Anyone else Kenny could've told wouldn't have given two shits either way, so he'd decided Stan and Kyle were the only ones who needed to know. Karen he hadn't told in person. He'd left a note and fifty bucks in an envelope on her pillow and hopped the first bus out of South Park he could find.

Which was how he'd ended up at a greyhound bus station in Denver at midnight. It wasn't ideal, considering the fact that if he got stabbed he'd only end up right back home in his own bed. His parents would kill him if they ever saw him again; he'd taken the bulk of their drug money out of his mom's underwear drawer just in case his own stash wouldn't be enough.

The station was pretty much empty when Kenny had arrived, save for the homeless-looking man huddled in the corner and a large suitcase beside an empty seat. Kenny approached the desk, behind which sat a portly woman cleaning underneath her fingernails with a pencil. She looked up at him as though he'd invaded some fundamental sacred ritual and turned to the computer with a great heavy sigh.

"Can I help you?"

"I need a one-way ticket out of here," Kenny replied automatically, as though it was something trite and rehearsed out of a shitty movie than his actual life. The woman seemed to follow this train of thought, judging by the way her eyebrows flew up into her hairline, and typed a few things into the computer.

"And where're you going, hon?"

_Fuck_. Kenny hadn't given that too much thought. He'd expected a big map or a list of cities or something, but there was nothing, like people just _came_ to the bus station with an intended destination. The woman was staring at him expectantly, thick red lips pursed in an impatient pout.

"Oh, like you have anywhere to go," Kenny scowled and looked at her nametag. _Doris. _What a bitch.

"Kenny?"

The voice was familiar enough to send a jolt of recognition through Kenny's bones, foreign enough to keep him from turning around right away (just in case this potential stranger was in the 'stabbing people in a bus station' mood). The stranger cleared his throat and came up right beside Kenny, a timid and unthreatening air about him.

"Kenny?" The stranger asked again, and this time Kenny had to turn around to meet his eye.

It was Butters. Super-melvin extraordinaire was at a bus station in Denver _way_ past his curfew, and he… Goddamn, he looked like he'd been to hell and back. His blonde hair was mussed up and grungy like he hadn't showered in days, his eyes worn out and tired behind his glasses, like he hadn't slept in just as long. Most of all, his voice was thick and rough, like he'd grown up more in the last three days than in all the years Kenny had known him.

"Dude, are you okay?" Kenny asked, trying very hard not to convey too much concern. Butters just shrugged and rubbed one of his eyes.

"Fine," he yawned. "A little tired. Where're you headed?"

"Good question," the woman piped up.

"This doesn't concern you, Doris," Kenny said without taking his eyes off of Butters, who seemed to appreciate the familiar face. "Where're you off to?"

"Los Angeles," Butters yawned again. "Gonna go visit my aunt."

"I guess I'll take a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, then," Kenny turned back to Doris with a smile.

"The twelve-fifteen," Butters piped up and gave Kenny a weary smile. "I assume you're aimin' to get on my bus?"

"Yeah," Kenny nodded, unable to look away from Butters' face. Butters was normally so clean-cut and wholesome looking—he'd never be caught dead looking anything short of spic-and-span, thank you—that Kenny had always thought he could do with a bit of dirtying up, but this… this was not right.

"Hey," Doris snapped. "That's a hundred and fifty-three dollars flat, kid."

Kenny snapped back into reality and fished a wad of cash out of his pocket. He'd counted it on the bus ride up to Denver, and it had come out to somewhere around three-hundred dollars. He had just a little less than half of that in the bank, meaning as soon as he got to wherever the hell he was going he had to start working. Los Angeles, though… maybe he'd find a lucrative career in the porno industry.

Doris handed Kenny his ticket and went back to her nails just as a bus rolled up. Kenny waited patiently while Butters grabbed his suitcase and fished his ticket out of his pocket. They filed on the bus, Butters tripping up the steps as they made their way to two vacant seats. The only ones available, unfortunately, were across the aisle from a suspicious-looking fellow whose hobbies probably included luring kids into his windowless van. Kenny made Butters sit by the window.

Once the bus was well on its way, Kenny allowed himself to look at Butters a little more closely. Even his posture had changed, now more slouched and relaxed, even though the way he picked at his nails suggested he had more to be anxious about than his cool and detached look would have anyone believe. Butters caught him staring out of the corner of his eye and smiled.

"Now, what're you lookin' at?" he asked, his accent thicker than Kenny had heard it in a good long while. Kenny folded his arms and gave Butters what he and Stan had termed the 'Broflovski Brow', reserved for times when people were being stupid, confusing, or just plain weird.

"Why do you look like you've been turning tricks for the last seventy-two hours?" Kenny asked. Butters, to Kenny's surprise, just kind of laughed and sank lower in his seat. Goddamn, how long had it been since he'd talked to Butters if he'd expected some wide-eyed emphatic denial of anything sexual?

"It's been a long few days," he said instead and turned his weary gaze on Kenny, seemingly searching for something unspoken in Kenny's face. "What about you?"

"Uh, same," Kenny shrugged and nodded. Butters nodded back and shut his eyes. It did look a lot like he'd been expelling a lot of effort just to keep them open, so Kenny didn't really want to disturb him. However, one thing was abundantly clear and Kenny couldn't keep from voicing it once he'd put all the pieces together.

"Butters, are you running away?"

Butters opened his eyes and looked at Kenny with a sort of calculating look; Kenny forgot sometimes that it was unwise to underestimate someone who'd spent most of his childhood as Eric Cartman's acting henchman. Butters' gaze then went soft, like he'd already decided that they were in 'this', whatever 'this' was, together, that they were in alliance with each other against the rest of the world. Kenny had always kind of envied his willingness to accept people on the few grounds they gave him.

"Are you?" he finally asked. Kenny shrugged.

"I prefer to think of it as 'getting out while the getting's good'," he said and gave a tight smile. "What about you?"

"Same," Butters nodded and ran his fingers through his hair in the way people did when they weren't telling the whole story. Kenny had figured that whatever was going on with Butters was pretty big, big enough to keep to himself, at least. The thing about Butters, though, was that he'd always been more than willing to talk anyone's ear off when they made the mistake of listening to him long enough—Kenny had had to endure an entire recounting of a family reunion in Florida once—which meant that Butters would talk eventually, only this time he showed signs of saying something interesting. Kenny was just going to have to wait it out.

They were about ten minutes into the bus ride when Butters piped up again.

"Hey," he whispered, "I got some cards in my suitcase. Wanna play some go fish?" Kenny snorted at that.

"Dude, you're eighteen," he said. "Go fish can't be the only card game you know."

"What about hearts?"

"No."

"B.S?"

"You're eighteen," Kenny reiterated, "call it 'bullshit',"

"What about war?"

"No."

"Egyptian war?"

"Wha—No!" Kenny almost shouted, forgetting for a moment that he was on a bus well-past midnight with probably the one person he didn't like yelling at. "Goddamn, didn't anyone ever teach you a normal fucking game like gin or something?"

"Oh, I know gin, sure," Butters gave a sort of half smile and climbed over Kenny to get at his suitcase in the overhead storage. "Why, I was at a family reunion once and all I had to do was play gin with my grandma. Everyone else was playin' football, see, and I'm not that great at sports to begin with."

Kenny rolled his eyes and silently pleaded with any available gods above to spare him from any more boring-ass stories about Stotch family reunions.

"I didn't think you'd know how to play," Butters admitted as he settled back in his seat, pulling down the tray table in front of him so he could shuffle the cards.

"Yeah, Kyle's mom taught me how to play," Kenny said, unaware that his voice had wavered until Butters asked a genuine "You all right?" as he dealt the cards. Kenny hummed lightly in response, mostly trying to remember what Mrs. Broflovski had taught him nearly six years before. They played the first hand almost in complete silence, with Butters breaking to explain the rules every once in a while along the way. Butters won that round, needless to say, and had felt a little guilty until Kenny had reminded him that it was _just a fucking card game_.

"I don't think it's fair to play anyone in anything if they're not at your same skill level," Butters shrugged, but re-dealt the cards anyway. "Then you're only cheating yourself and not learning how to get any better."

"Well, I'm all you've got right now so you're just going to have to deal with it," Kenny shrugged and placed a card in the discard pile. "And again, it's just a card game, dude."

Butters tried to blame his loss of their second game on fatigue. Kenny just shrugged and took the cards from Butters' hands.

"Go to sleep, then," he said. "I can entertain myself."

"Nah," Butters shook his head. "I reckon I couldn't sleep if I tried. Haven't been able to the last few days and that's been in a bed, so…"

"Too much on your mind or what?" Kenny asked, shuffling the cards methodically and trying not to appear too interested. That might deter Butters from sharing altogether, and he didn't want that now, did he?

"You could say that," Butters gave a small laugh, his big blue eyes chancing a glance at Kenny's. Kenny noticed that his left eye seemed a little off and couldn't help but stare, trying to figure out what it was. Butters just raised his eyebrows.

"What?" he asked. "Is my eye acting funky?"

"You, um—" Kenny tried not to stare as Butters rapidly blinked and tried to move what was now obviously a very prosthetic eye. "You have a fake eye?"

"I got nailed with ninja star," Butters laughed as Kenny winced. "What'd you expect? To tell you the truth, I kinda forget I have it sometimes."

"You forget that you can't see out of your left eye?"

"Eh," Butters shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Been so long that I can't really remember what it's like to have two. I mean, I can't drive or nothin', but other than that it's not too big of a deal. Just don't make faces at me on my left side."

"I had no idea," Kenny said softly, a sharp pain wrenching through his gut as he bit at his lip. "I'm really sorry." Butters just smiled and leaned back against the window.

"I know you didn't mean it," he said warmly. "I don't think I could've been mad about it this long even if you had."

If Butters could go through life tired, dirty, with one eye, as a runaway and still be as happy as he was… Either he was a living saint or repressing his anger. Kenny was betting more than anything that it was the latter and he most certainly did _not_ want to be around when he broke down.

"I will say," Butters began, "it was kind of a party trick when I was up at school. My roommates thought it was just about the coolest thing they'd ever seen."

"Whoa, you were at school?" Kenny interjected, astounded that he hadn't known anything about this. He'd just seen Butters on Monday, for god's sake. He couldn't have been in school… right? Then again, Kenny had spent most of his time since graduation working himself to the bone to pay off his parents' credit cards and squirrel money away in an account for Karen's college fund. He'd pretty much fallen out of touch with most everything, with Stan and Kyle acting as his only contacts to the outside world.

"I went to Boulder for almost a whole semester," Butters said in a way that suggested even he knew how ridiculous he sounded.

"And you left?" Kenny asked. "I thought you were all smart and shit."

"I am," Butters beamed. "But, uh… my parents stopped paying my tuition, so I had to leave."

"Why in the _fuck_ would they stop paying your tuition?" Kenny couldn't really fathom that. He'd assumed that, if his parents had the means and weren't on crack, they'd have sent him to school for whatever the hell he'd wanted—music or art or some shit. Stan's parents didn't care that he was majoring in music, and Kyle's parents had made peace with the fact that Kyle wanted to be neither a doctor nor a lawyer. Butters' parents, on the other hand…

"Well, they wanted me to major in economics," Butters began, "but I couldn't pass any of my exams 'cause economics is just one of those things my brain isn't good at understanding. Then they found out that I'd lied about a business class and that I was really taking theater instead and said I was just wasting their money and just… stopped paying."

He was mashing his knuckles together in the exact same way he had when they were kids. Kenny logged the behavior away for future reference.

"That's… really fucked up," Kenny said and brought his hand up to Butters' shoulder. "I'd bail if my parents did that to me too."

"Well," Butters shrugged and removed Kenny's hand, his own lingering over Kenny's just a little too long, and gave a smile. "What about you? You're obviously sore at your folks too. What'd they do?"

"Dude, what _don't_ my parents do?" Kenny rolled his eyes. "I just couldn't stay there anymore, you know? I mean… they work and do odd jobs and everything, but it's never been enough to support all of us, you know? They made me feel like it was my responsibility to earn my keep and pay off their credit cards and all that shit even though it wasn't. The only reason I would've stayed is Karen, but… that wasn't enough, you know?"

It wasn't until Butters was nodding, a sympathetic look on his boyishly handsome face, that Kenny realized he'd just said all of that out loud. Part of him supposed that one turn of sharing deserved another, that he was just giving back what Butters had given to him, but for the most part Butters was actually surprisingly easy to talk to. He wasn't afraid of Kenny like most people were; he didn't seem to judge him on what he'd heard from other people, just what he knew from his own memory. It was kind of nice.

"You know," Butters began, "It ain't a crime to put yourself first. You can't do right by anyone if you're nothin' but miserable all the time."

Kenny, unsure of how to respond, just settled back into his chair and hoped Butters would let it slide. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, could still see a sprig of innocence and warmth in that worn out, weary smile of his. Kenny bit his lip and smacked his head against his seat.

"Sorry," Butters gave a quiet laugh. "I didn't mean to upset you. I really do have a knack for sayin' the wrong thing, don't I?"

"No," Kenny shook his head. "I just don't have anything to say."

"How about a nice 'you're right, Butters'?"

Kenny laughed and looked up at the overhead.

"Okay, enough about all this shit. Tell me about school," he said, conversational vigor all of a sudden renewed. "You were there almost a whole semester longer than I'll ever be. Roommates, friends, fuck-buddies… I wanna hear it all."

Butters laughed and turned toward Kenny, slouched in his seat and looking like he was about to share his most intimate secrets.

"I really wanted to go to NYU, but my parents wouldn't let me," he admitted first. "And I got in too, but they said there was no tellin' what I'd get up to in college to begin with, let alone in another state. They made me go to Boulder instead so they could come check up on me every weekend. Crazy, right?"

"That's insane," Kenny agreed through a laugh. "Did you have any life whatsoever?"

"I _did_," Butters stuck his tongue out, which only made Kenny laugh harder. "Actually had a girl I was seein'—"

"A girl?" Kenny asked, just more than a little surprised. "I always thought you—"

"Liked boys?" Butters asked through a complacent smile. "I do. Who said I couldn't like girls too?"

"No one," Kenny shook his head, wishing only a little bit that he didn't feel some weird form of jealousy in the pit of his stomach. "Where'd you meet her?"

"She was in my acting class," Butters sighed, looking a little more far off in memory than Kenny would've liked. "Her name was Kate. Real nice girl."

"Tits?" Kenny asked and wiggled his eyebrows. Butters just smirked.

"She had 'em," was his only reply, much to Kenny's disappointment. "I dunno, she was just one of the kindest people I'd ever met. I was havin' trouble with a scene and all of a sudden she was right there helping me, even though everyone was gettin' kinda pissed off when I kept messin' up. She just made me feel good, y'know?"

"Mm," Kenny hummed in vague agreement. "You ever fuck her?"

"Not that it matters, but yeah," Butters rolled his eyes, amused in spite of himself. "Once or twice. We weren't really together long enough for it to pan out into much more, though."

"What happened?" Kenny asked. Butters shifted and refused to make eye contact.

"She kinda walked in on me… going down on one of my roommates a week later."

"Butters!" Kenny exclaimed loudly enough to warrant a few harsh admonishments from other passengers. "Fuck, dude… your roommate was gay too?"

"Well, we were both a little tipsy, y'see," Butters began explaining. Despite the bright red flush across his cheeks, he was holding his own surprisingly well against the return of the Broflovski brow. "He was talkin' about how this girl he was seein' was real bad at it, so I said that boys do it better anyway. You can guess where it went from there."

"I want every goddamned detail your pretty little head can remember," Kenny grinned. Butters snorted and resituated himself just a bit, not bothering to look at Kenny when he said he'd blocked most of the incident from his memory.

"Well then, I expect you to prove your claim to me at some point," Kenny heaved a sigh. "I guess we'll have to have a girl there for comparison, too. The things I do for science…"

"Oh, come on," Butters rolled his eyes (now that Kenny looked at him closely, he noticed the prosthetic eye didn't move quite as well as the other one). "You run through all the girls in South Park and now you have to prey on us poor fellas?"

Kenny just winked and sunk lower in his seat, not realizing until that moment that he was turned toward Butters, curled up so they both formed their own little world. They regarded each other silently for a while, Butters watching Kenny just as intently as Kenny was watching him. Somehow, it was okay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Howdy**. An update? What's that? Anyway, I'll be starting back at school in a few weeks so my updates will probably get more frequent once I have nothing to do but write about stuffy dead authors and what they were trying to say. **In the mean time, please for you to enjoy**. ()

Oh, and** thank you all for reviewing**. As always, it is a pleasure to see that you guys enjoy this as much as you do. :D

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><p>Kenny had first seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the age of thirteen. Kevin had taken it from a friend's house, operating under the delusion that it was <em>Dude, Where's My Car? <em>when really his friend was just kind of a dumbass and had put the wrong tape in the wrong sleeve. He'd gotten past the singing lips, declared it was for queers, and threw the remote at the back of Kenny's head. Kenny hadn't noticed, had barely even heard Kevin leave the room thirty seconds later—it had been just strange enough to keep him watching, just raunchy enough for him to fall in love. From then on he'd kept the movie under his bed, watching it only when he was alone so he didn't have to hide the tents in his pants.

"Kenny, I gotta tell ya, I'm not sure what you're gettin' at," Butters confessed as he tore open a few sugar packets and dumped them into his lukewarm cup of coffee. It was seven o'clock in the fucking morning; they were stopped at a little convenience store somewhere in the middle of Utah. Kenny was hoping the coffee would kick in soon, because conversing with a tired Butters was a not entirely unlike talking to a pair of damp socks.

"I'm saying that it's a liberating film," Kenny tried to explain. "Before I saw that I thought I was just going to spend my entire life slapping titties around. After, I realized that I could slap titties _and_ suck cock if I really wanted."

"I-if this is leading into your first homoerotic experience, I don't think I can handle that this early in the morning," Butters answered dryly and poured a generous amount of hazelnut creamer into his cup. Personally, Kenny took his coffee black, but that was another issue entirely.

"What, you don't want to hear about that one time I fucked Craig into having a personality?" he asked instead. Butters snorted.

"First of all, gross," he gave a smile as they walked toward the counter, a little too close together for a couple of guys who hadn't really hung out in years if you asked Kenny (but it wasn't as though he really minded anyway). "Second of all, unless you were outsourcing, just thinking of your options makes me wanna file sexual assault charges on my brain. You gettin' anything to eat?"

"Oh, no," Kenny shook his head. "Just coffee for me. Living on a budget."

"You can't just not eat," Butters frowned, ignoring the confused look of the cashier.

"I've been through worse," Kenny gave a reassuring laugh.

"Go grab something out of that little donut display," Butters shrugged. "It's on me."

"Dude, I've got enough money to—"

"Oh, hush," Butters rolled his eyes and grabbed his Velcro wallet out of his back pocket. "I do too. Get a croissant, get two—gimme your coffee while you're at it. I'm offering, so shut it."

"Butters, seriously, I don't like people buying me food when I can pay for my own," Kenny said very firmly. He'd never get over the fact that he'd probably never be able to repay Stan and Kyle for all the times they'd bought him lunch over the years. Butters, however, just looked the cashier dead in the face and asked to be charged for Kenny's coffee and two croissants. Kenny happened to hate being ignored, even considered paying for his own coffee anyway, but then his stomach let out a loud noise of protest and all bets were off.

"I could've paid," Kenny grumbled as he and Butters grabbed two equally massive croissants from the box. Butters just rolled his eyes again.

"Go put a dollar and thirty cents in the little jar for the cancer kids, then," he sighed. "I'm sure they'd appreciate it."

Out of spite, Kenny did exactly that—granted, with a little more animosity than most donors—and followed Butters back out into the parking lot.

"You mind if I smoke?" he asked and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. Butters shrugged and leaned against the side of the stucco building, biting immediately into the light, fluffy pastry like it was the best thing in the world. He even held Kenny's coffee for him while he lit up.

"So, were you only going to tell me about your first gay experience, or did you actually have a point?" Butters asked as he swallowed a particularly large lump of dough. Kenny laughed and scuffed his shoes on the blacktop below.

"I guess I was trying to say that it was when I first realized I liked guys too," he shrugged. "Like, it didn't just come out of the blue, all right?"

"Never said it did," Butters frowned.

"Yeah, well, you're the only one," Kenny shook his head and took a deep drag off of his cigarette, trying not to think about how hard Kyle and Stan had laughed when he told him. He took a breath and continued. "I guess it was what made me realize that it wasn't sex addiction, or perversion, or anything like that… okay, it's kind of perverted, but whatever. I must've jerked off to that part where Frank sneaks into Brad's bedroom about a thousand times. Spent the rest of my childhood hoping some guy would come sneak into my room and work me over like a Taiwanese hooker, you know?"

"Neat word pictures," Butters said through an involuntary yawn and continued to eat, more thoughtfully now that he wasn't starving. "Can I tell you something?" he asked, acting almost as though he hadn't said a thing at all.

"Sure," Kenny shrugged again and took another long pull off of his cigarette. Butters bit his lip and adjusted the glasses on his face.

"I-I reckon I woulda come into your room if I'd known you were waiting," he said quietly, a blush spreading over his cheeks and down his neck. Kenny felt the corner of his lips quirk up, but found himself void of any verbal response and so offered his cigarette instead. Butters smiled and took it.

"Just… in and out," Kenny coached through a smile and took the bag of croissants, rummaging around for his own. Butters took a drag like he'd done it before and, with the way his hair fell into his eyes and the way he was leaning back against the wall, Kenny believed it.

"I bought a pack of cigarettes the day I turned eighteen," Butters said and stared at the dwindling cigarette between his fingers. "Just 'cause I could, y'know? Not to smoke ever, 'cause I never liked that you did. When all that stuff started happening with my parents and getting pulled out of school… I think I went through that whole pack in a week."

Kenny just stood, munching on his breakfast and waiting for Butters to continue, but nothing more came. He didn't look like he was going to be giving the cigarette back, but Kenny could make a few sacrifices for anyone who bought him food. Old habits died hard.

"So you're a smoker?" he asked through a mouthful of food. Butters gave a sad sort of smile and shook his head.

"I wouldn't say that," he said. "I always thought it was more of a social thing; I felt kinda crappy smokin' all by myself."

"You should've called me up," Kenny shrugged. "I would've smoked with you."

Butters smiled again and flicked a bit of ash off into the crisp morning air. They stood in amiable silence, Kenny finishing his food and coffee and Butters finishing the cigarette. By the time they were ready to re-board the bus, the driver was yelling at them to get a move on, that they had a schedule to keep, yadda-yadda… Something about Butters' wry, amused smile made other people very hard to acknowledge.

Butters spent a large portion of the bus ride reading a worn out copy of a book called _Holidays on Ice_ while Kenny tried to find something listenable on Butters' iPod. He found Flight of the Conchords to be above satisfactory and a few other bands that Kenny had never heard of but had a good sound, but for the most part it was all a little too Radio Disney/Top 40 for Kenny's tastes.

"Who's the chick who sings the song about kissing girls?"

"Katy Perry?" Butters asked in response, which made Kenny wonder just how many other girls sang about that kind of thing. "What about her?"

"How many fucking songs of hers do you have?"

"I like her!" Butters defensively snatched his iPod out of Kenny's hands and began scrolling through something or other. Kenny felt his heart race just a little bit at how Butters' thigh rested so soundly against his, and may have even let a few naughty thoughts cross his mind when the first notes of the Rocky Horror soundtrack hit his ears. Butters smiled brightly and went back to his book while Kenny settled happily to the familiar sounds that filled his ears.

He didn't notice that he'd fallen asleep until he found himself mid-dream—Butters in fishnets and a corset, breaking into his bedroom late at night and fucking him beyond all comprehension. He woke with a massive erection, which Butters must have already noticed because his turquoise fleece was draped artfully over Kenny's crotch in a plea for common decency. Butters was still reading his book, so Kenny figured he hadn't been out for too long and stretched. He looked past Butters, out the window at the rolling golden desert, and smiled.

"Christmas without snow is gonna be so fucking weird," he said more to himself than anything else, but Butters managed to crack a smile anyway. Kenny felt a little warmth pool in his belly—it wasn't exactly the most trying task, but he really liked making Butters smile. Butters shut his book altogether and pulled his knee up to his chest in an obvious stretch.

"We should be in Las Vegas pretty soon," Butters said and checked his watch. He then attempted to stretch out every single muscle in his body before slumping in his seat and giving Kenny a lazy grin. "I think we have an hour layover or something… wanna go hooker-spotting?"

"Something tells me that game isn't as fun in Vegas," Kenny snorted and foldled his arms. "How much longer to L.A. again?" he yawned.

"I think we're supposed to get there at nine tonight or something," Butters shrugged. "We still got a ways."

"What're you gonna do when we get there?" Kenny asked, watching Butters' face for any unspoken clues; he couldn't rely on Butters' tendency to blather incessantly for any sort of truth. Butters just shrugged and started playing with his fingernails, interlocking his fingers until he was mashing his knuckles together again.

"Well, I figured I'd just try an' find a community college out there, y'know?" he shrugged. "Any way I slice it, even if I get a job I reckon I can't do anything I want without a degree, so."

"Even a theater degree?" Kenny asked skeptically, only to realize it was probably the wrong thing to say as soon as it'd left his mouth. Butters didn't seem to take it as too harsh an insult, but Kenny still tossed him an apology.

"I always figured a degree in theater was better than no degree at all," Butters just shrugged and propped his feet up on the seat in front of him. "Why, what were you gonna suggest?"

"Well," Kenny began lightly, "there've gotta be some pretty sweet openings in the porn industry for guys with just one eye."

Butters actually socked him on the arm—harder than he'd ever managed to when they were kids—and laughed just a little because, above all, that was one thing Butters never hesitated to do no matter how lewd the suggestion.

"I reckon that's what you're aimin' to do, huh?" he asked. "Have a couple good years in the porn industry a-an' then retire whenever the heck you feel like?"

"I'd prefer to start my own Playboy Empire, but that's pushing it," Kenny shrugged. Butters, never one for tact or grace when it came to this kind of thing, just shook his head and smiled.

"I mean really," he said softly and Kenny instantly knew that this was no longer a game. They were really talking now, again, like they had the night before. "If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?"

Kenny paused and realized that not once in his eighteen years of existence had anyone actually asked him that question. Sure, there had been school projects and a few adults in his younger years, but after a certain point no one really expected much out of him except a few illegitimate children and a drinking problem. So far he'd done an upstanding job at proving everyone wrong, but it never quite felt like enough.

"Ken?"

Kenny snapped back to the conversation to find Butters staring at him with a patient look on his boyishly handsome face. Fuck, he hated that Butters had such a profound effect on him sometimes.

"I think I've always wanted to help people," Kenny admitted very quietly (and quite grudgingly). "Kids mostly. I mean, I know my parents loved me and everything, but they… they shouldn't have kept me, you know? Kids can't help who their parents are; I guess I'm lucky I'm a lot stronger than Kevin and Karen. Kevin cooks up crystal with his girlfriend somewhere outside of fucking Omaha and I've been gone for, what, two days? So Karen's undoubtedly pregnant by now—"

"Aw, come on now, Kenny," Butters reprimanded. "There's no reason to be so harsh on them. I know Karen well enough a-and I think she's way too smart to get mixed up in anything like that."

"Yeah, well," Kenny shifted in his seat. "Growing up in our house, sometimes it didn't really matter how smart you were. You know Kevin had to take AP Chemistry one year just so they wouldn't toss him in jail. He got the highest score you could on that test and he _still_ makes meth."

"Well, he's putting his skills to use," Butters shrugged. "Not very well, but still. Kenny, if you wanna go into social work you should. Heck, I bet you'd be real good at it. Not only do you know the difference between right and wrong, you live it too, Ken. The world needs people like that."

Kenny felt his face get hot. People blushed when they were embarrassed, and embarrassing Kenny McCormick was a feat in and of itself. He hadn't even blushed the first time a girl had seen him naked, the first time he'd had sex, or even that time Cartman had pantsed him in their ninth grade gym class. Kenny was known for being cool, calm, collected, and any other variation of 'relaxed' anyone could think to offer. What the fuck was it about that way Butters talked that had him blushing like he gave a shit?

"Aw, come on now," Butters laughed. "Just 'cause you're a good guy doesn't mean you're any less of a man or nothin'."

"I know it doesn't," Kenny clipped out, impatiently trying to will away the heat in his cheeks.

"Then why're you blushing?" Butters cocked his head to the side.

Fuck. Kenny turned and faced the aisle, ignoring the happy laughter lilting behind him, around him, through every one of his senses. There was no cruelty, no mockery, no hint of malice whatsoever.

"If no one's ever told you what a good guy you are, I reckon I got a few words to share with the town of South Park… if we ever go back, that is."

"I'm sure as shit not," Kenny snapped. "You do whatever the fuck you want."

Kenny heard Butters huff out an impatient breath and sit back against his seat. He, however, made the foolish mistake of believing that this would be the end of the matter entirely and only found himself wanting kill himself when Butters continued talking.

"You know," he began, "I know we all got stuff we're all insecure about. Some people don't like how they look, some people don't think they're smart enough, some of us didn't grow up too great, and most of us I know aren't too fond with our flaws in general, but you? You're insecure about all the things that make you a good person. Boo-hoo, you have the obsessive-compulsive need to do the right thing. Get over it."

"No, Butters," Kenny whipped around to face a rather grave-looking companion. "No, _you_ have an 'obsessive-compulsive need to do the right thing', okay? I lie, I steal, I fuck up, and you've never done any of those things in your life."

"Because I was taught that bad things would happen to me if I did!" Butters exclaimed back, not too concerned about the attention he was getting from a few of the bus's nearby riders. "You're willing to do the right thing, consequences be damned. Being forced to do good because you're afraid bad things will happen if you don't doesn't make someone good, god dang it-wanting to do it _just because_ it's the right thing does."

Kenny opened his mouth a few times to reply, decided on a few witty retorts in his head, retracted them, and eventually just ended up looking like a beached guppy. Butters hadn't done anything wrong, though, so he didn't really deserve a verbal lashing… he'd just broken down in a mere few minutes what Kenny had spent nearly two decades trying to conceal. Not that he was good, because they all were—Stan and Kyle were some of the best people in town, and even Cartman started rescuing cats in the tenth grade—but that he… cared. If he stopped laughing and joking, then people knew that he took something seriously. If he took something seriously, he had a vulnerability, and vulnerabilities put one in line of destruction. He'd dealt with a vulnerable body for his whole life, but never a vulnerable spirit, and knowing that Butters had seen all that in a moment of idiotic weakness… Kenny shuddered to think what could be done with that if Butters was indeed a malicious person.

Exposed. He was exposed and he didn't like it one fucking bit.

Kenny turned away from Butters once more and pulled his hood up around his face, drawing it shut as he'd done years before. He didn't speak to Butters until they disembarked the bus in Las Vegas a couple hours later.


	3. Chapter 3

**So I guess this chapter finally decided to get done or something**. Again, now that I'm back in school rest assured I'll want to write fic way more than I'll want to write about Romanticism or Othello or whatever the fuck it is I'm taking this quarter.

All errors are my own, blah blah blah, we all know it. Enjoy, lovelies. :)

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><p>Look at him, sitting there with his nose buried in a book like nothing had happened. In retrospect, Kenny supposed nothing really had—what, the guy had paid him a fucking compliment and Kenny just acted like he'd stabbed him in the fucking face? Even Kenny could admit it was a little harsh, possibly the tiniest bit psychotic. Butters should have been downright pissed, but, as usual, he was just as content to be treated like shit as he was to be treated like a normal human being. Kenny bit his lip and shook the nervous energy out of his arms and legs.<p>

"Hey, pick a fucking drink and be done with it, schmuck."

Kenny gave the man behind him a particularly gruesome scowl and flipped him off. Butters glanced quickly from his book over to the vending machines to make sure that Kenny wasn't in any immediate danger. When nothing seemed to present a threat, he held Kenny's gaze for about half a second before returning to his book once more. Kenny pursed his lips, blindly hit a button, and grabbed… a Pepsi. Being more of a Coke person himself, Kenny didn't take it as a particularly good omen but went over to talk to Butters anyway.

"I'm sorry."

Butters looked up from his book, eyes the size of dinner plates as he looked at Kenny with that stupid, innocent look on his face.

"What're you talkin' about?" he asked. Kenny kept himself from rolling his eyes, even held back a 'you-know-exactly-the-fuck-what', and slid into the seat beside Butters. The Las Vegas bus station smelled a little like cat piss; Butters wasn't much better by comparison, but at least he hadn't been pissed on to Kenny's knowledge.

"On the bus," Kenny explained very levelly, slinging his arm around Butters' shoulders. "I'm kind of retarded about that kind of thing."

"Being on a bus?" Butters asked, the corner of his mouth quirking up ever so slightly. Kenny rolled his eyes that time.

"Look, just give me a fucking break, all right?" he practically begged. "I'm a shithead. We all know this. The least you could do is have the fucking decency to be mad at me."

"Why?" Butters cocked his head. "'cause you can't take a compliment? Believe me, I've had to deal with worse character flaws."

Kenny sighed and brought his arm back around to open the bottle in his hand, wanting something to occupy his hands more than anything. He took a swig and grimaced, remembering just what it was that had drawn him to Coke in the first place, and shoved the bottle at Butters with a particular ire for the dollar and fifty cents he'd just wasted.

"Aw, thanks," Butters grinned and took a long drink, eyes still on the page of his book. Kenny pretended not to notice the smooth bob of Butters' Adams apple as the liquid slid down his throat, which probably would have worked a lot better if he hadn't given the most obvious side-glance in the history of side-glances. Fuck, it was too much.

"I'm gonna go out for a cigarette," he coughed and stood. "You need anything?" Butters looked up from his book with that concerned look on his face.

"You all right?" he asked just as his phone began blaring some ridiculous synthetic song that kind of hurt Kenny's ears.

"I'm not finished with you," Butters warned as he fished around for his phone in his pocket. Kenny nodded, cigarette already dangling from his lips as he made his way out of the station to light up. He was getting one of those uneasy feelings in the pit of his stomach that only ever came around when something bad was about to happen. It was how he'd known when the town needed Mysterion, it was how Kenny had known when to get Karen out of the house on those days when his dad was just a little too drunk, and it was how he'd known to tell Kyle that Stan hadn't left his room in seven whole days.

Kenny looked through the window at Butters and confirmed his stomach's suspicions. He couldn't hear the conversation, but Kenny was willing to bet that it wasn't a pleasant one judging by the way Butters' eyebrows knitted together high on his forehead. Rather than watch Butters get worked up (something which, believe it or not, was not on Kenny's bucket list), Kenny took to walking up and down the sidewalk until it was time to board the bus. When he took his phone out of his pocket to check the time, he found that he had several missed calls from both Stan and Kyle clogging up his missed alerts and supposed he should probably see what the fuck it was that they wanted.

Okay, so announcing one's intent to run away late one night without so much as a destination to give had been a little melodramatic, but never let it be said that Kenny couldn't get attention when he wanted it. He punched Stan's number into the keypad (because Stan would actually answer his phone like a goddamned decent human being) and took a deep drag off of his cigarette as he the line rang.

"Hey dude," came Stan's voice, all thin and high and out-of-breath.

"Holy fuck, are you all right?" Kenny asked about two seconds before he heard the unmistakable sound of Kyle Broflovski laughing and realized exactly just what was going on. Kenny leaned against a lamp post and shook his head. "You're sick, dude."

"Whatever," Stan half-laughed, half-moaned, and then there was some sudden commotion of the phone being passed around.

"You know, I know I'm a pervert, but at least I don't answer my phone while I'm in the middle of fucking someone," Kenny said. Kyle barked out a laugh on the other end.

"Stop having such shit timing and maybe it'll stop being an issue," he said, just as out of breath as Stan had been. Kenny tried to put his mind elsewhere when he heard Stan give an impatient groan in the background and Kyle told him to 'hang on just a sec'. He didn't need to be there to know Kyle had tossed the phone aside so they could finish up.

Well…They must've really wanted to talk to him, or they wouldn't have answered.

Of course, being the creep that he was, Kenny didn't hang up or even hold the phone to his chest or anything and just listened like it was just another brand of shitty hold music. Granted, hold music didn't generally leave Kenny with a dry mouth or the insatiable urge to stick his hand down his pants, but hey.

"You still there, dude?" came Stan's voice a few minutes later, thick and sated and happy as ever.

"Yeah, I'm here," Kenny sighed and took another pull off of his cigarette. "Bravo on your big finish, maestro. I don't know that I would've had the same gusto if Kyle's dick had been up my ass."

Stan snorted into the receiver and muttered an answer to a question Kenny hadn't heard Kyle ask.

"Kyle wants to know if you cry when all guys try to fuck you or if his dick is just too big for youto handle," Stan yawned.

"Ha-ha," Kenny rolled his eyes. "Tell him I cry almost as hard as he cried when he found out I fingered his cousin Rachael at his bar mitzvah."

Stan barked out a laugh and tossed the phone to Kyle, who sandwiched the receiver between his shoulder and ear so he could put on his pants.

"So, how's everyone's favorite little vagrant?" he asked. "Where the fuck are you that you can't return a goddamned phone call once in a while?"

"Las Vegas," Kenny replied through a smile, because for as big of an asshole Kyle was, he'd almost never been shy about his soft spot for Kenny. Kyle repeated the answer for Stan, who laughed even louder than he had before.

"You would," he said into the phone, probably much too close to Kyle's face to keep himself from licking it or whatever the fuck it was that they did. "Planning on joining Cirque du Soleil or something?"

"Elvis impersonator, actually," Kenny smiled, knowing Stan was doing the exact same thing however many hundreds of miles away that he now was. Kenny felt his heart sink a little at the realization. "I'm actually just passing through on my way to L.A."

"Ew, why?" Stan wrinkled his nose. He had a certain distaste for L.A. that may or may not have had something to do with Wendy being at UCLA for school. There was a whole list of shit Wendy had done that had left heartbroken and crippled by depression, but Kyle and Kenny had tried to convince him (unsuccessfully) that that was no reason to take it out on an entire city.

"Oh, um," Kenny began, remembering he actually had something to say. He began regaling Stan and Kyle with the events of the last twelve hours, and knowing those two, they were listening cheek to cheek at the receiver, Kyle already dressed and Stan still naked with the sheets pulled up around his torso.

"So you've got a boner for Butters," Kyle said when Kenny was finished. "That's fucking weird, dude." Kenny rolled his eyes.

"How is it weird?" he asked. "You two have been fucking each other for years."

Okay, well, _a_ year or something. Wendy had graduated high school a year early, had left for UCLA a year early, and hadn't wanted to stay together with Stan for an entire year earlier than Stan had anticipated. Granted, he hadn't expected her to want to do a long-distance thing, but she'd gotten a boyfriend, like, _the fucking week_ she'd gotten there and, yeah, Stan had taken it pretty hard. Kenny didn't know at what point he and Kyle had started fucking, just knew that they had because _they answered the phone while they were fucking like it was some kind of joke or something. _He supposed that it probably was-everything was a joke to them.

"Dude, it's not weird," Stan sighed. "Kyle's just being a dick because his grades aren't posted yet. If you and Butters wanna shack up in a little house in L.A. and have a shit-ton of babies, well good for you." There was a brief pause before both Stan and Kyle simultaneously went into fits of laughter. Of all their tandem habits, that was the most annoying.

"Fuck you both," Kenny just resolved to say. "Where the fuck else was I gonna go, Omaha to live with my fucking brother?"

"Aw, dude," Stan said through his remaining laughter. "You know you could've stayed with us."

"I wouldn't have even fucked you unless you asked nicely," Kyle called, now across the room, probably looking for his own post-coitus/up-all-night-studying cigarettes. Kenny just scowled.

"You guys are dicks," he said with an air of finality.

"Wait, wait," came Kyle's voice as he grabbed the phone from Stan and dashed out of their apartment. "I've gotta talk to you," he said in that way that was never meant good things.

"Is everything okay?" Kenny frowned and stubbed out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe.

"Uh," Kyle began, and Kenny could hear the distinct little click-click of his lighter, "My mom's kinda pissed that you didn't say 'bye to her. And Ike thought you were dead."

"Oh shit," Kenny brought his hand up to his mouth, running his fingers over his chin scruff in utter disbelief. "I totally fucking forgot, dude."

"Will you just call her when you get to wherever you're going?" Kyle asked earnestly. "Ike too. He misses you, dude."

Kenny felt a little sick. The Brolovskis had taken him in so many times, especially after Stan's parents had split and things with their little group had been kind of rocky for a while. He'd spent Hanukkah with them every year since he'd turned eleven, despite not being Jewish, had been to every single one of Ike's birthday parties since he'd been adopted into the family, and had even sat with Mrs. Broflovski all night long, after Stan had had to go home, that one time Kyle had been in the hospital in ninth grade. That was when she'd taught him how to play gin, and when he'd made her laugh by impersonating Kyle's octogenarian uncle Seymour almost flawlessly.

Kenny sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"You have her number?" Kyle asked, reading Kenny's mind in that weird way that he could.

"Yeah," Kenny nodded. "Is Ike—"

"He's pretty pissed," Kyle shrugged. "He'll forgive you as soon as you fucking say 'hello', though."

"You're not pissed, right?" Kenny asked.

"Nah," Kyle shook his head. "You're doing what you've gotta do. Just don't forget to call every once in a while."

"Yeah," Kenny nodded. "Um, I should go and make sure Butters still has our bags and shit."

"Yeah," Kyle sniffed, deeply pondering something or other. "I, uh… you know."

"Yeah," Kenny coughed. "You too, dude. And Stan."

"Yeah," Kyle nodded. "Well… later, dude. Take care of yourself. And call my mom."

"I will."

Kenny rubbed at his eyes as he pushed the end button and tucked his phone back into his pocket. He couldn't believe he hadn't fucking said 'goodbye' to Kyle's fucking family after all they'd done for him over the years. He was such a piece of shit sometimes.

By the time he'd gotten back to the bus station, Kenny figured Butters would be done with his call too. _Fuck_, the call. How did Kenny manage to be such a fucking self-absorbed asshole? Butters had looked upset when Kenny had left… what if he wasn't feeling better

Kenny got back to the station only to find both his and Butters' bags unattended and at the mercy of whoever walked on by. He scanned the station lobby for any sign of the familiar blonde tuft of hair, but there was just about no one in the lobby except for an older woman with an addiction to cheetah prints and Mr. Vending Machine.

"Hey," Kenny nodded at the man. "You seen that blonde guy with glasses around here anywhere?" The man looked about as disinterested with his response as he was with the news.

"Oh yeah," he said offhandedly. "He had a fucking conniption fit just a few seconds after you left. The attendant at the desk was gonna make him leave if he didn't cool it. He's been in the bathroom ever since."

Kenny nodded his thanks and entered the foul, cramped little room at the end of a vacant hallway.

"Butters?" his voice reverberated off of the damp-looking tile walls. A faint whimper sounded from one of the stalls and Kenny breathed a sigh of relief. "What are you doing in here?" he asked.

Butters didn't answer, just squeaked his sneakers on the wet tile floor and slammed the stall door shut.

"Okay," Kenny began and leaned against the wall. "You can open the stall and talk to me, or I can crawl in under the door. I really don't care either way."

Butters groaned and stood behind the door, still playing the hesitation card. Whatever, he was already standing, which meant Kenny had won. He _would_ open the door, goddamn it, because Kenny was just that fucking good and Butters was just that starved for positive attention.

"So I have to talk about my problems but we don't even get to acknowledge yours," came Butters' frank response from behind the stall door. "That seems fair."

"Goddamn it," Kenny muttered and ran his hands over his face. So much for being starved for positive attention. "Butters, you and I know you're way more well-adjusted than I am so just get the fuck over it and open the door."

A pause and then a very distinct "No."

"Oh, come the fuck on," Kenny whined and smacked his head back against the wall. "Stop pretending you're a little bitch and just tell me what's going on."

"No."

"Dude, how are you not appreciating the fact that I'm fucking worried about you?" Kenny groaned and pushed away from the wall, now walking around the tiny bathroom like a madman. "I'm not doing this because I'm a fucking sadist who wants to know all your secrets or some shit, okay? I'm sorry I was an asshole earlier but give me a fucking break, all right? You're the only guy other than Stan and Kyle who's ever been nice to me for, like, no reason and I just want to return the fucking favor or something."

Kenny didn't quite realize he'd said so much until silence started ringing in his ears. Butters unlatched the stall and poked his head out to get a glimpse at Kenny's face, looking for a hint or two of sincerity. He looked like he'd been crying, all red-eyed and blotchy in the cheeks. Something deep in the recesses Kenny's chest cavity made him want to hold him until the redness went away.

"Did you mean all that?" Butters asked, his chin sticking out in an attempt to appear detached. Kenny just sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Yeah," he admitted softly and gave Butters one of those smiles that wasn't exactly a smile so much as it was an acknowledgement of the truth. Butters just nodded and wiped at his nose before emerging from the stall entirely and moving to wash his hands. Kenny couldn't help but notice that he scrubbed vigorously for an entire thirty seconds before rinsing.

"You're an asshole," Butters said very softly. Kenny nodded.

"I know."

Butters pursed his lips and grabbed a few paper towels out of the dispenser—he even dried his hands like there was a prize to be won for it. Kenny watched as he wadded up the used paper towels and tossed them into the trashcan with staggering accuracy. He then rounded on Kenny with an entirely unreadable facial expression.

"Fine," Butters shrugged. "My aunt called and said we can't stay with her. Wanna know why?"

"Kind of, yeah," Kenny furrowed his brow and nodded.

"My _dad_ called her and said if she let me stay with her, they'd stop helping her pay off her credit card bills," Butters nodded in that 'this is my fucking life' way. "He said that if I wanna be a faggot, I should be able to suck enough dick to get myself a decent place in no time."

"Well, obviously your dad doesn't know jack shit about real estate in California."

Butters rolled his eyes and threw a paper towel at Kenny's face, which really only made Kenny laugh because Butters was _so unthreatening_.

"Come on," he said through a chuckle, "we all know your dad is a fucking chode, dude. And, seriously, my parents have said some pretty fucked up shit to me too."

"Oh fuck that," Butters tossed it aside with a wave of his hand, "I hate my parents; I could care less about that. I'm pissed off that we don't got a place to go to now, Kenny. I know logistics ain't exactly your forte, but we're pretty much headed to a cardboard box under the 405."

"The what?"

"Never fuckin' mind," Butters sighed and put his face in his hands. "Now I'm gonna get raped and left for dead under a freeway because my c-cock-head parents were too fucked up to let me live with someone who loves me."

Kenny was trying desperately not to be amused at the amount of profanity coming out of Butters' mouth, especially since he hadn't said much more than 'oh hamburgers' until the ninth grade. Then he really looked at Butters—really looked at him—and gathered that not too many people had seen him in this state, physically or mentally. Kenny felt his gut wrench just a little at that and pulled Butters into a one-armed hug.

"Dude, I think I know what we need," he said.

"A will to live?" Butters muttered sarcastically into the palm of his hand.

"Some strong-ass booze, some good weed, and an assload of low-quality porn," Kenny sighed wistfully. At this point Butters struggled just a little too hard against Kenny's embrace and just ended up bashing his elbow against one of the stalls.

"Fuck-sticks," he muttered, trying to rub the pain away.

"Your vocabulary has gotten pretty colorful in the last twenty minutes," Kenny remarked as Butters finally wriggled away from him and over to the sink again.

"Ha," Butters' voice cracked. "Maybe goin' away to school was a bad influence on me."

"Or the best one," Kenny shrugged and caught Butters' eye in the mirror. He looked not entirely unlike how he had the day Kenny had nailed him with that stupid-ass ninja star, after they'd dressed him up like a fucking dog and tried to take him to the vet just to keep from getting in trouble, after he'd been wandering around unnoticed for hours. He'd gone back to that sniffling, innocent kid who'd just wanted to be loved, who just wanted someone who would help him when he needed it most, and as usual no one was coming to his aid.

Kenny couldn't help it, really… he had to let Butters know that he understood, that everything was going to be all right, that he would make sure he got all those things that he wanted, that he deserved. He pulled Butters back close to him, and in a moment of complete and utter shit-headed weakness, kissed Butters as reassuringly as he possibly could.

Butters looked a little dazed to say the least, but didn't shout or push Kenny away or anything, which was probably a good sign.

"I'm sorry," Kenny said without thinking. Butters just shook his head like he wasn't entirely sure what he was disagreeing with and pulled Kenny into a tight embrace, breathing steadily in through his nose and out through his mouth. Kenny's chest got heavy at this and for a second he thought he might be having a heart attack, but then he realized it was just affection and rolled his eyes at himself for not being able to distinguish between the two feelings.

"Just… stay with me, please?" Butters asked between a few deep breaths.

"Dude, duh," Kenny laughed faintly and brushed some of Butters' hair with his fingers. His hair stuck up.

"What?" Butters asked as Kenny began laughing.

"You need a fucking shower, dude," Kenny said through a smile, trying to think about a place where they could get one. "We both do."

"Don't even start with me," Butters rolled his eyes and pushed away from Kenny. "I already feel gross enough without you pointin' it out."

Kenny snorted and shoved his hands in his pockets. Personally, he'd gone weeks at a time without running water as a kid, but the lack of hygiene must have been driving Butters insane and getting on a hot, dingy bus for another nine hours would only make matters worse. Kenny nodded, resolution clear in the back of his mind, and grabbed Butters' wrist.

"Follow me," he said and pulled Butters out of the bathroom and to their stuff, which had remained blessedly untouched.

"Where are we going?" Butters asked as Kenny called 411 for a cab service.

"Well, going to L.A. right now is a moot point," Kenny said very levelly. "Why not enjoy ourselves in Vegas while we're here?"

"Kenny, that's dumb," Butters groaned. "We don't have the money for a hotel here."

"Don't worry about that," Kenny shook his head just as a woman with the cab service answered on the other line. Butters adjusted his bag on his shoulder and shifted uncomfortably while Kenny rattled off their location. He raised his eyebrows as soon as Kenny hung up and folded his arms. Kenny just gave one of those stupid half-smiles that left Butters with a hot cheeks and a thump-thump-thumping heart.

"I've never stayed in a castle before," Kenny shrugged. "Might as well while we're here, right?"

Which was how, after an uncomfortable cab ride and a few rounds of arguing with a rather impetuous desk clerk at Excalibur, Butters and Kenny found themselves in a room with a massive king bed and a killer view of the Strip.

"Kenny," Butters said very carefully. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful or nothin', 'cause I'm not, but _what the fuck is this_?"

"Uh, a kitschy attempt for the American consumer to get in touch with Arthurian Legend?" Kenny suggested with as much innocence as he could muster. Butters just dropped his bags at his feet and fished around for his wallet.

"I'm paying for half of this room," he said very insistently.

"Nope," Kenny shook his head and flopped down on the bed. There was a widescreen TV—he hadn't even remembered asking for that. "You can pay for food or something. The room is on me."

"Kenny, this is ridiculous," Butters breathed and fell into a heap beside him. "We don't have money for this."

"I have a little in my savings account," Kenny shrugged and flipped on the TV. "Enough for this after I used my powers of persuasion. I mean, if we're going to be bums for the rest of our lives, we may as well go out in style. Fuck knows we deserve it, right?"

There was a brief moment of silence before Kenny felt Butters' lips pressed firmly against the corner of his mouth.

"I'm gonna go check out the shower," Butters said and leapt of from the bed like a little kid on Christmas morning. Kenny fell asleep to the sound of running water and Butters' very own rendition of some ridiculously happy song he couldn't bother to identify.


	4. Chapter 4

**I swear to God** I had more plans for this chapter, but this is kind of just what came out. I'm not used to working with such a short timeline (I think it's been less than twenty-four hours in the story), so... I guess I'll just stop making excuses and hope to Christ that you don't kill me for my crappy smut skills. -_-

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><p>Anxiety came crashing down on Butters the moment he stepped out of the shower. He was stuck in a hotel in Las Vegas that neither he nor Kenny could afford, without food, without a way to leave, and without a place to go. He'd barely finished putting on his pants before he'd curled up in a corner and tried to remember his deep breathing. One of the therapists in high school had taught him how to do it and even if he hadn't exactly learned how to cope with what made him anxious, more often than not he could at least calm himself down.<p>

Of course, what the therapist hadn't told him was that sex more often than not is the best remedy for all anxieties, but being that that wasn't quite an option right now...

"Okay, Leopold," he said very quietly to himself, because sometimes the only way to cope was by being able to hear yourself. "Ain't no use gettin' antsy over what you can't fix. What's done is done, just fix what you can. It's okay."

So often, though, the problem was that Butters couldn't identify his problem clearly enough to be able to fix it in an effective manner. Mostly he just lay in one place and prayed for enough peace of mind to get up and finish doing what he had to do. Of course, now that he had nothing to do, there was no promise that he'd be able to pull himself out of anything this time.

Then his phone started blaring 'Boys Boys Boys', and being that Bebe was usually responsible for anything Gaga-related in his life, Butters could only guess that she'd changed her ringtone before he'd left.

"H-hello?" he stammered.

"Hey there, city-slicker," came Bebe's good-natured greet through the receiver. "I figured you were probably still on the bus, might like a little company."

"Oh, no," Butters moaned and, against his better judgment, curled up in a ball on the floor, germs be damned. "No, no, no… I'm in a bathroom, in a hotel room in Vegas, and—you'll never believe this—Kenny McCormick is right outside."

Bebe gave her obligatory scandalized gasp and undoubtedly flopped onto her bed, ready to listen to the details of everything Butters' statement implied. Butters just groaned and told her everything, starting with exactly what had happened after she'd dropped him off at the bus station until this exact moment. By the time he was done he was a little closer to tears than he would have liked to be.

"That rat bastard!" Bebe all but shouted into the phone. "Your dad's lucky I don't know what his new car looks like, because I'd fucking key the shit out of that goddamned thing if I did."

"Oh, you would not," Butters rolled his eyes and sat back up. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"Hon, I'm so sorry," came Bebe's more earnest, heartfelt response to the situation. "If I'd known I would've just let you stay with me and Heidi a little while longer."

"Thanks," Butters murmured and ran a hand through his hair. Bebe was always willing to help, a trait that often went overlooked by most people when they saw how staggeringly beautiful she was. She'd lost a lot of potential friends to jealousy, which was a shame because she made such a good friend.

"He had no fucking right to do that to you," Bebe continued through a sigh. "I'm sorry, I just can't believe… what a prick."

"Trust me, I already called him just about everything I could think," Butters replied sardonically. "Kenny too. He was so upset that he spent money he doesn't have on a hotel in _Las freaking Vegas._"

"Well, you could be stuck with a worse companion," Bebe shrugged in that way she did when she examined her nails or things of the sort. "And, you know, if you're interested, his dick's not half bad either."

"Aw, Bebe, you didn't," Butters groaned. Of all things, he didn't need that picture in his head. Bebe, however, just laughed.

"Of course not," she said. "I mean, we've fooled around a few times, but we never actually got up to fucking. He was actually kind of skittish about it." Butters frowned.

"When was that?" he asked, making sure by his tone to let Bebe know he didn't believe her.

"Sophomore year, probably," she dismissed. "I didn't really try after that. He mostly stuck to girls that weren't in our class anyway."

"Huh."

"What?" Bebe asked, amused. "Couldn't stand the thought of sharing a sexual partner with him?"

Butters laughed in that way that wasn't mirthful so much as it was a deep and desperate desire to talk about anything other than what had just been mentioned. Of all the topics of conversation...

"Can you blame me?" he asked. "'We don't know where his dick's been'… isn't that what everyone always said?"

"Well, after he got over his crippling anxiety with someone else, I guess we'll never know," Bebe shrugged and then paused, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "Though, you know who he did fuck?"

"Mm, the Mormon kid?" Butters supplied hopefully. He'd always thought Gary was the type.

"Rhetorical, hon," Bebe amended affectionately, "End of junior year, right before she went off to L.A."

It was Butters' turn to gasp in the most scandalized of ways.

"He didn't," he said, hand clapped over his mouth in shock. "He wouldn't have… not with Wendy. Not when she and Stan—"

"They were broken up when they did," Bebe said. "Remember, they broke up, like two weeks before she graduated and then got back together for the summer?"

"Oh, shit," Butters laughed, unable to form a proper response. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Bebe shrugged. "Other than Wendy informing me of Kenny's nicely-shapen penis, I don't think it was ever spoken of again."

"Well, then that's as it should be," Butters groaned as he stood. "And as much as I love our chats, I gotta make a plan for what to do when we leave here."

"You could always call Wendy if you're still keen on L.A.," Bebe offered. "I'm sure she'd let you stay in a heartbeat until you found a place of your own."

"Even with Kenny there?" Butters asked uncertainly.

"Hon, they fucked, they didn't build a life together," Bebe said very frankly. "If you're capable of it, I'm sure they're more than well-equipped."

Butters made a face that he knew Bebe couldn't see, thanked her for the advice, and hung up the phone. She'd been extremely generous with letting him stay at her place for a few days while he arranged to stay with his aunt, and had been more than willing to help him blow off steam by offering up some pretty mind-blowing sex. And yeah, it had been _her_ idea, but come on, you don't say _no_ to someone who offers help you in a time of need. That's just bad manners.

However, if he was going to have to hear about it for the rest of his life, he wasn't going to be too happy about it.

Butters looked at his phone—there were bigger issues than his sex life on the table here. They needed a place to go, and Wendy was the only option right now. Plus, if he did it without asking Kenny first, he'd have no choice but to go along with it. Or he'd just abandon Butters and go his own way. Butters gulped at the prospect. Odd as it had been at first, having a companion had been… well, it'd been a downright Godsend is what it had been. Butters probably would've ended up talking to complete strangers and getting straight-up murdered if Kenny hadn't come along. If Kenny refused to continue with him , it was likely Butters would resort to blowing the first truck-driver he saw in hopes of getting halfway to Barstow… that was on the way to Los Angeles, right?

With a shaky breath, Butters found Wendy in his contacts list and hopped up on the sink counter, waiting nervously as the phone rang.

"Oh, my God, I was just about to call you," Wendy answered.

"Bebe already got to you, then," Butters smirked. Kenny had his boys, loved his boys, and Butters had his girls. Butters loved his girls.

"Even if she hadn't, you know you're more than welcome to stay with me," Wendy said very genially. "I mean, I have three housemates, so you'll have to tell McCormick to keep it in his pants."

So Wendy didn't want him to know about her and Kenny. That was fine, even though anyone with half a brain in their heads and any sort of deductive reasoning skills could tell she was overcompensating in hopes that she would appear detached. It was all Butters could do not to tell her to work on her lying.

"We won't stay long," he instead insisted.

"Oh, like I care," Wendy snorted. "You'll liven things up. My roommates are out all the time, and when they're here all they talk about is going to the gym and health food. I can't eat a slice of pizza in my own home without feeling like the whore of Babylon."

Butters laughed, maybe a little too loudly, but he didn't care because he'd _missed_ Wendy. Life in South Park had been far from the same without her.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll let you know when we get on our way."

"No problem," Wendy replied cheerfully. "God, it's been way too long. I'll talk to you soon!"

"'bye," Butters smiled and hung up, relief washing over him. He opened the door and stepped back out into the room, half-expecting a cross-looking eavesdropper only to be greeted by a rather peaceful sleeper. Butters checked his watch. It'd been almost half-an-hour since he'd stepped into the bathroom and Kenny appeared to be out cold already. He hated to wake him, but… Butters sat on the bed beside him and ran his fingers through that unruly mop of hair. Kenny stirred and rolled right into Butters' side.

"Good shower?" he asked and buried his nose in Butters' hip. "y'smell good."

"Mm," Butters hummed, full-on stroking Kenny's hair now. "I left you some soap."

"Gee, thanks," Kenny snorted. He didn't seem to have any intentions of moving, seemed perfectly content to nose at the skin just above Butters' jeans. Butters rolled his eyes and grabbed a handful of Kenny's hair, to which Kenny responded with a long, needy groan.

"You'd better get your ass in that shower, mister," Butters said, his voice settled low in his throat. "I got a place for us to stay, an' I said you were housebroken."

"Aw, you lied for me?" Kenny cooed and sat up. "How sweet."

"I know, I know, I'm enough to give anyone a toothache," Butters smirked. Kenny nodded and nuzzled his neck. "You're awful affectionate. You always like this when you wake up?"

Kenny didn't respond, just pushed him back onto the bed and straddled him.

"So," he said with a smile, "where's this place we're staying? A youth hostel where we have to pay by having sex with the greasy super?"

"No, but I think you and I watch the same porn," Butters laughed and soon so did Kenny. They laid there in a heap on the bed, laughing until they couldn't laugh anymore, Kenny's body flush against Butters'. It was times like this Butters wished he could still see out of both eyes… the more he could see of Kenny, the better, especially those dark blue eyes. There was always something about those eyes.

"Hey, wasn't that a lesbian flick?" Kenny practically purred and Butters laughed because, yeah, it totally was.

"Man, that's a good one," Butters recalled fondly, his stomach starting to take on that old familiar warmth as the blood drained away from the rest of his body. "Wasn't one of 'em the same gal who was in that one about the sex boarding school?"

"Oh fuck, you're right," Kenny laughed. "Dude, you watch a lot of girl-on-girl, don't you?"

"I watch a lot of everything," Butters admitted through a grin. He was horny, despite having just jerked off in the shower, and Kenny? He was more than willing and, judging by that bulge in his pants, was just about as ready for a fuck as he was. Suddenly Butters was inundated with all those anxious feelings again, the ones that only went away with a good fuck, and it was all he could do to keep his intentions to himself. Butters fisted his hand in Kenny's hair again, eliciting another keening moan from his companion, and felt such a deep sense of satisfaction that he did it again. He then brought Kenny's lips close to his and asked, very softly, "Y'ever messed around with another boy before?"

"Sure," Kenny nodded, the color high on his cheeks, "once or twice." Butters decided that the whole staying-with-Wendy thing could wait for a bit and, making sure to catch him off guard, flipped Kenny onto his back. The other boy tried to squirm, but between his wrists pinned at the side of his head and Butters hips resting firmly on top of his, there wasn't much to do but let Butters kiss him.

"Say," Butters began as he pulled away. "Wasn't I supposed to prove how much better boys are at sucking cock?"

Butters grinned. He loved playing his perceived innocence to his advantage—all he had to do was say the word 'cock' and he had Kenny panting and writhing beneath him, hard, like a starved animal in heat. He lifted his hips and reached between his legs to undo the button and zipper of Kenny's worn out old jeans.

"Dude," Kenny breathed as Butters' hand closed around his dick. He had that stupid, blissful smile on his face like he was finally home after having been away for so long. Butters leaned down and sucked Kenny's bottom lip between his, moving his hand in steady, fluid motions.

"Like that?" Butters asked softly. Kenny nodded and brought him in for another kiss, but Butters quickly broke away because _fuck it all _he couldn't take it anymore. He'd always been a people-pleaser and that had only gotten worse once he'd started having sex with people. No sooner did he have his mouth on Kenny did Kenny fist his hand in Butters' hair and groan. If Bebe had been telling the truth, Wendy had been right-Kenny did have a pretty nice dick.

"Fuck, dude," Kenny almost sounded like he was laughing. Part of Butters knew that laughter was just in Kenny's nature, that he did it all the time because that was just how he responded to things, but it struck most of Butters as a little too coherent for what was happening. Without a second thought, he sucked Kenny down to the root and reveled in the breathless response he got.

However, just as Butters had established a rhythm, Kenny's phone began blaring that "I'm on a Boat" song and Butters moved to pull away. Kenny attempted to push his head back down as he flipped the phone open, but Butters swatted his hand away. He'd be having none of that, thanks, and instead just resumed his lazy strokes as Kenny answered.

"Hey, dude," he said breathily. Butters raised his eyebrow. To say that he was a little irritated was an understatement. Who the fuck answered their phone when they were in the middle of getting head? "Nah, just, uh… hangin' out."

Butters snorted and sucked two of his fingers into his mouth, because Kenny wasn't paying attention and that was downright unacceptable. As soon as the digits were nice and wet he positioned one right at Kenny's entrance and pushed right on in. Kenny dropped the phone mid-sentence. Butters removed his hand from Kenny's dick just long enough to grab the phone from beside him and sandwich it between his shoulder and ear before returning his hand to its task.

"Hello?" he answered cheerfully.

"Uh, hello?" came the confused voice of Stan Marsh. Butters smiled.

"Well, hey there Stan, what can I do for you?" he asked as he added a second finger. Kenny grunted and readjusted himself, but he didn't tell Butters to stop, so Butters pressed merrily on.

"Uh, hey Butters," Stan said uncertainly as Butters moved and scissored his fingers in exact rhythm with his hand. "I was just calling to see if you guys had made it to L.A. yet."

"No, not yet," Butters shook his head, smiling as Kenny loosened up beneath him. "We're actually stuck in Las Vegas right now. Here for the night, I'm afraid."

"Oh, that's cool," Stan seemed to accept this as a reasonable excuse. Butters bit his lip and crooked his fingers just exactly the right way.

"Shit-fuck!" Kenny shouted and slammed his head back against the bedspread.

"What the fuck was that?" Stan asked, a little worried.

"That would be me finding Kenny's prostate," Butters replied brightly and Kenny started laughing. Butters quickly snuffed the response by grazing the spot again, turning Kenny's guttural laugh into a throaty whine.

"Oh, dude," Stan fumbled. "Shit, if I'd known—"

"Fucking awkward from the other side, isn't it you piece of shit?" Kenny chastised halfheartedly. Butters rolled his eyes.

"Sorry Stan, you're gonna have to hold on," Butters said, "he's talkin' too much," and without another word threw down the phone and sucked Kenny back into his mouth. It was a matter of seconds before Kenny started bucking up in earnest—another few moments and he came down Butters' throat with a sharp cry.

"Jesus," Kenny breathed after a few seconds and patted around on the bed for the phone, but Butters could see the 'call ended' screen from where he knelt. Kenny sat up and ran a hand through his hair, looking from back where his phone still lay to Butters. He looked pretty fucked out for just getting a little head, but maybe it had been a while. Butters didn't presume to know anyone else's life.

"You just…" Kenny began, looking back at the phone again. Butters really had no idea what he was doing or why anyone would _answer the fucking phone_ while they were getting their dick sucked, but again. Presumption. People's lives. Kenny attempted to answer Butters' confusion by pulling him into a sloppy kiss, but all he managed to accomplish by that was cleaning the remainder of his spooge out of Butters' mouth.

"Dude, get up here so I can do you," Kenny mumbled and slipped onto the floor beside Butters. Butters just shook his head and rolled up to his feet.

"You can owe me," he said, which was probably the most difficult thing to say when sporting a category 5 erection. "You always answer the phone like that?"

"Come on," Kenny gave a dopey smile and rested his head against the bed. "You've gotta come, dude. Blueballs isn't healthy. I wanna suck you off, so just let me."

"Just… why would you answer the phone like that?" Butters asked and undid his pants, leaving just enough room to slip his hand into his pants and stroke. Kenny's eyes went glassy as he watched Butters jerk himself, and Butters was just close enough to rake his fingers through Kenny's hair. He wriggled a little, letting his pants fall down around his thighs. "Tell me and I'll let you suck it."

Kenny just laughed lazily and looked up.

"Domineering little shit, aren't you?" he grinned and licked his lips as he made eye-contact with Butters' dick. Then, like a man hypnotized, replied, "they've been doing it to me forever. Thought it'd be funny. And you fucking went along with it…" he chanced a look up at Butters once more. "So fucking hot."

Butters smiled and with a hand on the back of Kenny's head, affectionately tossed out a "good boy" before he felt Kenny's mouth close around him.

Yeah, the whole staying-with-Wendy talk was officially on hiatus until further notice.


	5. Chapter 5

What an uncharacteristically quick update. My, my, what has gotten into me? (see: midterms)

By the way, a most humble thank you to my reviewers. I adore every ounce of feedback you give. :D

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><p>Kenny wasn't entirely sure of what had happened as he lay on the bed, all hot in the face and panting like he'd just run to Saskatchewan and back. He just knew that Butters was right beside him, breathing just as hard and looking more like himself than he had in what was probably a very long time. Butters without a big, dopey smile on his face was just wrong, and Kenny hadn't realized it until now, when the biggest and dopiest of all smiles had come into existence.<p>

"You know," Butters began, "for only having messed around with a one or two guys before?" He finished the statement with an overexagerated whistle that made Kenny laugh and run his hand down his face.

Goddamn, where did you go after you'd had someone's dick down your throat? Normally he wouldn't have a problem shifting to his side and falling right asleep, but something about Butters made his heart beat too fast to even think about sleep. As it was, all Kenny really wanted to do right now was roll over and kiss Butters until one or both of them fell asleep. Mostly sleep just sounded really good right now, as it usually did after strenuous physical activity. He ended up compromising and reached up to tangle his fingers in Butters' fluffy hair. Butters hummed lightly and leaned into the touch.

"Don't overdo the affection," he said with a smile. "I don't think I could handle it." Kenny rolled his eyes.

"Asshole," he muttered through a laugh and pulled Butters into a full embrace. The only time he'd been in a situation comparable to this had ended up with him sandwiched between his two best friends with a sore ass and a deep, irrepressible urge to commit his first suicide in months. Butters at least wasn't treating him like one of those irreplaceable china dolls Stan's mom collected, trying to stroke his hair and tell him everything was okay.

Goddamn, that had been an awkward night. Then again, he'd violated the first cardinal rule of threesomes, which was "never go in sober", so he kind of had to just deal with his own mistakes and move on.

"I'm kinda hungry," Butters groaned and stretched in Kenny's arms, breaking Kenny out of his thoughts. His bright yellow t-shirt (the one with that surly-looking cartoon sun Kenny had given him for his birthday fucking _years_ ago with 'Aren't We Just a Fucking Ray of Sunshine' written across the chest) rode up his torso and Kenny laughed again. They'd kept their shirts on. Whip out your dicks, sure, but in the name of all things decent, keep the shirts on.

Stan and Kyle would have asked why he was laughing, or Stan would have anyway. Kyle probably would've just rolled his eyes and tweaked Stan's nipple for asking such a stupid question. Butters, however, just looked at Kenny, hopped right onto his train of thought, and started laughing too. That, more than anything, made Kenny's heart feel that stupid full feeling again. Stan and Kyle did that all the time—laughed at something without saying a word about it—and Kenny had needed to spend his entire fucking life with them just to get _close_ to being able to secret-laugh right along with them.

Kenny realized he'd been staring only when Butters leaned forward and gave him one of those long, slow, gut-clenching, just-had-sex kisses that made the spine melt right out of him. He couldn't stop reiterating to himself that he wasn't a cuddler (with the exception of those first and last twenty minutes, the ones right before falling asleep and right after waking up, which found Kenny in his most affectionate state), but with Butters he may have been willing to make an exception... son of a bitch.

Okay fine, maybe he was kind of a cuddler.

"I'm thinkin' we probably both need a shower after that," Butters said against Kenny's lips the second he pulled back.

"Shower sex?" Kenny bounced his eyebrows. Butters smiled, all big and lazy and Kenny just started nosing and kissing at his neck, kind of wondering what that smile would look like if they'd actually fucked. He was willing to explore the notion further (for science's sake, of course), but Butters seemed to have other ideas.

"I don't think I could even if I tried," he admitted softly, and then cast one of those pseudo-innocent looks upward. His fake eye kind of threw the whole look off to be honest, mostly because of the way it couldn't follow the other one entirely, but it didn't hinder Kenny's ability to predict the second half of the statement, something about not wanting to waste water.

"Right, we're being green," Kenny nodded. "Give a hoot, don't pollute… stand on the side of the highway and cry when the white man throws trash on the ground."

"Mmm, on second thought maybe I'll just wait out here and go later," Butters smiled, because, even at age eighteen every once in a while he was still kind of proud of his ability to be sarcastic. Kenny smiled back and pulled him into another kiss.

Which was how they'd ended up in the shower together—Butters just to rinse off the evidence of a good, thorough fucking-around and Kenny to make himself presentable for…

"Hey, who the fuck are we staying with?" he asked as he soaped his hair. Butters looked a little like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. Great, so he didn't want to tell Kenny anything. His mode of deflection?

"Well, that ain't enough soap to do a damn lick of good, mister," he frowned and, upon seeing the empty bottle of shampoo, took the bar of hotel soap to Kenny's hair and frothed and scrubbed like his life depended on it.

"Butters," Kenny said, a hint of warning tone in his voice. Butters wouldn't look him in the eye, just kept scrubbing away. Kenny kind of groaned—he loved when people touched and paid attention to his hair, so much so that he was half hard again by the time Butters had finished and sent him to rinse.

"Well, you wonder why your hair never dries fast, I bet," Butters continued. "You don't wash it properly, so the oil you don't get with the soap makes it all gross."

Kenny had been able to read people for as long as he'd been alive, and while Butters was just as gifted as him in that regard, he was in no way immune to Kenny's excellent skills of deduction (which, boner or no, were always working at top operating speed). As far as Kenny knew, Butters didn't know too many people in L.A., and if it were something like a motel or another family member's house, he would've had no problem telling Kenny abou—

"Aw, fuck, we're staying with Wendy, aren't we?" he groaned. Butters stepped back, still not looking at Kenny entirely, and started mashing his knuckles together under the residual spray of the water. _Fucking. Great_. Now he had to see Wendy after having spent an entire year listening to Stan talk shit about her, after keeping it to himself, not telling a fucking soul—not even Kyle or Ike—, that they'd slept together in a drunken haze one night in junior year.

Butters knew. He had to have known, otherwise he wouldn't have looked so much like he'd just run over someone's cat.

"I never told anyone about that," he said very levelly. "Wendy said she didn't either."

"Well, Bebe doesn't count," Butters rolled his eyes. "That'd be like you not tellin'—wait. That'd be like Stan not tellin' Kyle somethin'."

"She told you," Kenny said and shut off the water. "Who the fuck else has she told, that's the question."

"Well, she told me all of an hour ago," Butters said, his voice taking on a little bit of venom as he followed Kenny out of the shower. "And trust me, you'd _know_ if Bebe had told anyone."

Kenny scowled and grabbed a clean towel off of the rack just above the toilet.

"Fine," he said. "Stan has Kyle, Wendy has Bebe, who the fuck do I have?"

"Well, whether you like it or not, you got me now," Butters said very soundly and opened the door back into the main room to retrieve his clothes. "I'm perfectly fine with you bein' my new best friend."

Kenny wrapped his towel around his waist and looked at himself in the mirror as Butters chattered on about something or other. He was thin, scraggly, poor-as-shit, and couldn't go five minutes without saying the word 'fuck'. Who'd want to befriend that? Least of all Butters, who deserved only the best kind of friends. He was one of the most loving and accepting people on the planet, and someone like that really only should have bothered with worthwhile people... not Kenny.

"Hey," Butters popped back into the bathroom fully clothed. "You even listenin' to me?"

"Not really," Kenny shook his head and moved to leave the bathroom, but Butters put a hand on his chest and looked him in earnest.

"What?" Kenny grumbled. Butters smiled and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

"I said any secret you have is safe with me," he said softly through a grin. "Scout's honor."

"Okay, fine," Kenny sighed and pushed past Butters to get his clothes. "So you know I lost my virginity to Wendy. Whoopdee-fucking-doo." Kenny rifled through his bag for a clean shirt, only realizing something was awry when he noticed Butters hadn't yet tried to comfort him in that aw-gee-that's-okay-fella kind of way. He felt a pang of nerves shoot through his stomach as he looked up at Butters and gulped. "You, um… you didn't know that, did you?"

Butters' eyes were the size of dinner plates as he shook his head in a detached sort of way.

"No, I-I can't say I did," he said softly and then, with a confused look, continued with a "you didn't lose your virginity 'til you were sixteen?"

Kenny rolled his eyes because, fucking seriously? That was the take-away. Fucking awesome.

"Not _technically_," he explained, not really wanting to revisit all those pubescent, anxiety-ridden attempts to stick his dick in a girl without hurting her or making a fool of himself, all while trying to make her feel good. The thought of it still made him shudder, but he figured he owed Butters at least a little something, so he settled on, "I'd get up to a certain point and I'd kind of just freak out."

Butters gave one of those fake sympathetic nods. "I was like that too for a while when I realized girls didn't have nothin' between their legs" he said. Kenny just rolled his eyes and pulled on his clothes as quickly as he possibly could. He'd gone to Kyle and Stan with the problem, but neither were really sympathetic to the cause—Stan had had Wendy and Kyle had had… math, or something. He'd finally gotten so fed up that he'd gone to Sheila with his problem. In turn, she'd passed him off to Gerald, who'd sat Kenny down in his office one day and laid it out plain and simple for him.

_"You do watch a lot of pornography, Kenny," _he had said in that very calm, level way that neither Kyle nor Sheila had._ "Sometimes when that's the only perception you have of sex, you can end up putting too much pressure on yourself to live up to what you see in those movies. All you've really done is desensitized yourself to sex and gotten rid of a lot of the mystery that makes sex fun. You just have to remember that what you see in those movies isn't real, so there's no way to live up to them."_

It had been a nice sentiment, and an insanely nice gesture on Gerald's part considering he'd had to start playing the caring father role not only to his own sons, but eventually to both Stan and Kenny as well, but it was definitely on that exceptionally short list of 'Things That Have Made Kenny McCormick Blush'.

"Aw, come on," Butters laughed, pulling Kenny out of his thoughts yet again. "So you're not the slut everyone thinks you are. Not your fault you had performance anxiety."

"God damn it, shut the fuck up, Butters," Kenny whined and crawled under the covers of the bed. "And I _am_ a slut," he muttered, but Butters didn't appear to notice. In fact, he seemed perfectly content to keep on talking.

"I mean," he began innocently enough, "I lost it to Eric when we were fourteen, so I mean… that's at least embarrassing on my part."

"Dude, gross," Kenny groaned and curled into himself. He wasn't sure what was more disgusting, the fact that Butters had lost his virginity to Jabba-the-fucking-Hutt or that Kenny cared that such a fucking dweeb been sexually active two years longer than Kenny had been.

"Hey, I never told anyone about that either," Butters prodded the lump underneath the bed covers that just happened to be Kenny's ass. "To tell you the truth, I never really counted it 'cause he'd kind of talked me into doing it for something real dumb. 'Course, we did do it once or twice again after that… so I guess it did count. Never mind."

Kenny threw the covers off of his head to find Butters kneeling beside the bed, his face just a few inches from Kenny's own.

"If you tell me that Cartman raped you, I will fucking run back to South Park and murder his fat ass," he said very plainly. Butters rolled his eyes and started running his fingernails along Kenny's hairline.

"It was consensual," he reassured, like it was the most ridiculous suggestion Kenny could have ever made. "I wanted to make him happy." And then, softer than anything he'd said all day, "I wanna make everyone happy."

Kenny gave Butters an assessing once-over before deciding it was time to smoke some weed and forget this whole fucking thing was happening. He patted the pockets of his hoodie, reached into the pockets in his jeans, but to no avail. He leaned off of the bed and pulled his bag over, searching through its contents with the highest attention to detail as possible.

"Ken, can I ask you somethin' personal?" Butters asked from somewhere off to the side of him.

"Might as well," Kenny shrugged. "You know almost everything about me now anyway. What's the point of keeping the mystery alive?"

"Well, it's just," Butters began tentatively. "Why Wendy? I mean, Bebe said you tried with her, but… W-well, why Wendy?"

Kenny stopped and looked over at Butters. He seemed to be asking the question honestly—like Butters would ever ask for any other reason. Kenny slid off of the bed and pulled the bag into his lap, still looking as he began talking.

"To tell you the truth, I kind of cheated," he admitted. "Stan told us, like, everything about when they'd fuck, like what she liked, what she didn't like, what he said to her that made her crazy. I guess I knew what she liked, so I knew I could make her feel good if I tried, you know?"

Butters nodded, not completely on board with what Kenny was saying, but made sure Kenny knew he understood and left it at that. Just as well, since Kenny had found a small stash of joints and a lighter rolled up in a sock at the bottom of his bag.

"Jesus Christ-fuck, how do you stand all this real conversation?" Kenny asked Butters without hope for a response and held up his findings. "Always pack in case of emergency," he wiggled a joint in his fingers and lit up. He took a long drag and settled back against the bed. "You want any?"

Butters nodded and smiled when Kenny placed the joint between his lips. He inhaled a little too much, enough to make his eyes water, but he held in the smoke until Kenny took another drag and pecked him on the lips.

"I always liked real conversation," Butters coughed. "Conversation is one of the only things where you're forced to respond to another human being's idiosyncrasies." Kenny made a crack about using big fancy college words, but let the conversation die there because hey, wouldn't you know it, Butters was right again. They passed the joint back and forth until it was apparent that Butters wouldn't be able to take anymore without being completely down for the count. His one eye was bright red, the other still white and glossy. Kenny started laughing.

"That's the trippiest fucking thing I've ever seen," he gasped for air. Butters scrambled to check his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A second later he was back in the room, on the floor and desperate for air through his laughter.

"What am I gonna do?" he asked, that big grin still prominent on his face. Kenny propped himself up on his elbows, clumsy but sure in his movements.

"We can lie and tell everyone you have pink eye," he supplied rather unhelpfully. This, however, seemed to strike Butters as the most hilarious thing he'd heard this century, and he was further incapacitated by laughter as he fell all the way back on the floor. Kenny's head was swimming in that really pleasant way that always accompanied scenes like this. Sometimes he wished he could have the feeling forever, but then remembered he was a fucking useless garbage disposal of a human being when he was like this and would never be any help to anyone ever again. He sluggishly made his way over to Butters and lay down on top of him.

"You still hungry?" he asked.

"Fuck, I wanna eat everything," Butters whined through a laugh and clutched his stomach in desperation.

They ordered room service—a massive sandwich and a plate of something that Kenny couldn't pronounce for Butters, while Kenny got every single breakfast food known to mankind. And champagne. Lots of champagne, thanks in no small part to Kenny's fake I.D. They sat on the bed, legs crisscrossed and passing a bottle of champagne between themselves as they ate and watched what appeared to be some crappy Discovery Channel special on the end of the world. Neither of them seemed to mind the grim subject matter, both of their faces stuck in perpetual grins as they shoved food into their faces.

"If I could eat all day, every day," Kenny said somewhat profoundly, "I think I would."

"I think that would be a responsible decision," Butters nodded and buried his face in his miles-high corned beef and pastrami sandwich. Something made him stop mid-chew, and with the way his shoulders were popping and his head was bopping, it probably had something to do with the ringtone on his phone. Lady Marmalade, the… well, the not-1970s version.

"I love this song," Butters declared a little too loudly, his lips synching perfectly to the words pouring out of the speaker on his phone.

"It's like ten years old," Kenny laughed. "And it's your goddamned ringtone, you fag." Butters seemed unconcerned with this fact, just kept bobbing his head in time with the music, swaying like he himself was clad in corsets and glitter, waiting for his next trick to come in and make him a rich man.

"I jerked off to this video every time it came on the T.V.," Butters just grinned and continued dancing with himself. Kenny grinned.

"You and every fucking guy with a functioning dick and hand," he said and checked Butters' phone for him. "Dude, Wendy's calling."

"Fuck," Butters muttered and fumbled with his phone. "What if Wendy can smell the pot on us?"

"She can't smell it through the phone," Kenny snorted and pushed the ignore button.

"Shit," Butters cursed softly. "What if she wants to know how we're getting there? Fuck, fuck, _fuck_, I hadn't even thought about that, Kenny! I-I don't think I got enough money for another bus ticket."

"Me neither," Kenny shook his head and bit at his thumbnail. Even if he did have enough money for the bus, Kenny wouldn't have gotten back on one. Just because he'd lived in squalor and filth for the first eighteen years of his life did _not_ mean he was okay with travelling on the world's largest piss-mobile. Come on, they were two perfectly intelligent people—busses were not the only mode of transportation. Though, given their finances and the three remaining joints in Kenny's bag, air travel was probably out of the picture too. That only left one option in Kenny's mind. He turned to Butters with a look of plaintive innocence and good will and handed him the champagne.

"I guess we could always hitchhike?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Holy Shitballs**, this chapter is long. Whatever, I had a long week and a half, full of boring school shit no one cares about so I won't go into it. Just enjoy the extra bulk. Stuff happens in this chapter, guys! It actually happens!

Also, I've been watching way too much **Queer as Folk** for it to be healthy. This may account for some stuff.

* * *

><p>"You know," Butters called from a little ways down the sidewalk. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way or nothin', but maybe you just don't have the best ideas when you're high."<p>

Kenny scowled but said nothing, just kept his right thumb outstretched in hopes that someone would stop soon. They'd been outside since seven in the morning, walking from bus stop to bus stop, trying to find a decent human being to put them out of their misery, and so far everything had been shit.

Except for that group of douchebags in a large hummer who'd slowed down just to ask Butters "How much?"

"I charge by the inch," Butters had countered and, after looking the guy as up and down as he could, waved him away. "Sorry, no non-profits." Kenny had smiled because, really, you didn't come out of a childhood like Butters' without knowing how to handle yourself.

They'd also gotten honked at once, to which Butters had replied "The horn blows, but does the driver?"

It was noon now, and with only those two interactions, things were looking bleak. Then Mr. I'm-unaffected-by-hangovers came up behind Kenny and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder.

"Maybe we should get a little somethin' to eat," he said with a small smile. "Might help if we look well-fed."

Kenny nodded and followed Butters down the street to a Denny's. The hostess raised an eyebrow at the both of them, all packed up like the vagrant hobos that they were, but made no mention of what she was thinking. Kenny slid into the booth and took in his surroundings, checking for exits, nefarious-looking characters… all that stuff that normal people didn't think to look for when in a new place. He shut his eyes as an unsupervised toddler tore across the room at a breakneck pace, screeching with her newfound freedom from her tired-looking parents. He wouldn't say he was hungover per se—he'd passed that point at sometime in high school—but that by no means meant that he was in the mood for bright lights or screeching children.

"Dude, have you noticed how many fucking people bring their kids to Vegas?" Kenny asked as he tried to rub his headache out through his temples.

"It's really uncomfortable," Butters agreed, smiling in thanks when the waitress brought them coffee. Kenny sipped at his black coffee as Butters busied himself with shaking sugar packets and tearing into those little containers of creamer. "When I have kids, we're goin' to Disneyland like a normal-ass American family," Butters said and took a long sip from his mug. Kenny just blinked.

"You want kids?" he asked. They'd just gotten over being kids themselves… how was Butters already thinking about having his own?

"Always wanted kids," Butters shrugged. "Figure I'd be a better parent than either of mine were." Kenny nodded emphatically, mostly because he'd often had the same sentiment about his own situation.

"You'd definitely be the most kick-ass of dads," he said. "Just didn't know you'd thought about it, y'know?"

"Well, I mean," Butters set his coffee down and leaned forward, looking a little more pensive than Kenny would have liked. He needed more coffee before they got into any serious sentiments. This, unfortunately, didn't keep Butters from jumping right into one anyway. "If you got a crappy family, wouldn't you always dream of having a good one? Only way I can think of gettin' that is by makin' my own."

Kenny felt a little like he'd been hit in the chest. He couldn't count the number of nights he lay awake in his bed, wondering what life would have been like if his mom had cooked dinner like Sharon, or if his dad had always been there with sagely advice like Gerald.

"I feel you, dude," was all Kenny managed to say as he watched Butters stir his coffee with a spoon. At least with those dark circles under his eyes and that far-off look let Kenny know once and for all that the guy was at least a _little_ hung-over from the night before. Maybe he was just one of those fuckers who was better at hiding it. Kenny sighed—he used to be like that.

"I kinda always wished I had a brother or sister," Butters continued wistfully. "Woulda made dealin' with those psychos a whole lot easier. I know you don't get along great with Kevin, but at least you had each other, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Kenny shrugged, suddenly not too keen on making eye contact. "I mean, he was good for some things, you know? Let me have his old porn rags, taught me how to fight… He's still a shit, though."

"Did you ever tell him that you're bisexual?" Butters asked. "I mean, did you ever feel like you could tell him?"

"He's the first person I told," Kenny nodded. "Mostly because he was just there. Could've been anyone. Could've been my fucking father and I would've told him. I mean, I'm glad it wasn't, but you get the idea. We were sitting there watching T.V. and I just… kinda snapped. I told him everything."

"What happened?" Butters furrowed his brow and Kenny shrugged.

"He gave me a black eye and left the house for three days," he said like everyone had someone in their lives who would do the same thing. Butters' eyes went big, but he didn't say anything, which Kenny took as a hint to continue. "I got home from school the day he came back and there was this box of condoms on my bed next to a pamphlet that he probably got from Mackey or someone—"

"Oo, those were always my favorite," Butters smiled. "Which one was it?"

"I don't know," Kenny shrugged. "Kevin blacked out the real title and wrote 'A Faggot's Guide to Not Getting AIDS' on it instead."

Butters fell stoic, probably still trying to figure out if it was a loving gesture or an asshole move. Kenny had just written it off as both and had decided to be done with it. Butters didn't seem so keen on letting it go, just kept looking thoughtfully into his cup of coffee. Normally, Kenny didn't have a problem with silence—in fact he'd spent the better part of his childhood only talking when necessary, and even that had been indiscernible—but something about being with Butters made silence feel wrong. He cleared his throat.

"So, do you want to get married then?" he asked, bringing back the initial conversation. Butters lips quirked up into that wry smile as he looked at Kenny over the tops of his silver wire-rimmed glasses.

"Sure," he nodded. "You free right now?"

It took Kenny a few moments to register the words with why exactly Butters was laughing to himself and he immediately began back peddling. He was quiet, sure, but he was usually pretty good with his words, you know?

"Not to me, dude!" he exclaimed and Butters laughed harder. "I mean… you were kidding, obviously."

"Yeah, mostly," Butters breathed through his laughter. "Gotta admit, you and me could do a lot worse than each other."

"I guess so," Kenny shrugged. "Never really thought about getting married, though." Which wasn't necessarily true. He'd thought about what would happen if he were to attempt marriage—depending on the person, he'd come to the conclusion that he'd probably be pretty good at it. There were just so few people he could stand that would make the scenario a possibility.

The rest of the time had passed in relative silence, from the waitress taking their orders, to them getting and eating their food, Butters only broke in to remark about the saltiness of his fries. Kenny took them and finished them without Butters having to ask, and let Butters take the rest of his hash browns off of his plate without even offering them up as a trade.

By the time Butters had gotten up to pay the check, Kenny was indeed full of food, but not necessarily full of anymore hope that they would be able to hitch a ride all the way out to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, he grabbed his stuff the second Butters got back and hauled it over his shoulder.

"Hey," Butters gave a soft smile and put a hand on Kenny's shoulder. "We're gonna be okay, right? You've just gotta have faith that everything'll turn out all right."

Then he kissed Kenny right there, amidst the several other patrons enjoying their meals. Granted, a kiss between two men probably wasn't the worst thing this establishment had seen all morning, so Kenny kissed back because how was he supposed to resist those full, pliable lips moving so soundly and surely against his?

"Now, turn that frown upside down," Butters grinned against Kenny's mouth. "No one's gonna pick up a Debbie Downer."

Kenny rolled his eyes at that. He'd hated the phrase back when Mackey had used it on Stan and he hated it now.

They walked back to the curb, a little closer to the freeway this time, in hopes that someone would be more sympathetic later in the day. They hadn't been standing there for five minutes before someone drove by and shouted "faggots!" out of their window. Kenny something boil in his gut as Butters supplied a weary "Jesus, they're still usin' that one?" It wasn't necessarily that Kenny cared what strangers shouted out of their cars—he'd been called worse and he knew for a fact Butters had too. What was really getting to him was that they were probably going to have to go back to that fucking bus station if they didn't get anyone to bite soon.

"You all right?" Butters asked, moving to put a hand on Kenny's shoulder. Someone honked and Butters immediately retracted his hand, looking around for the perpetrator. "Crimeny, you'd think we were sucking each other's dicks or something."

"I'm really sorry, Butters," Kenny mumbled and put his face in his hands. "We should've just gotten bus tickets. This was really fucking stupid."

"Aw, so you had a dumb idea," Butters waved it away and gave him that stupid, affable smile. "Jeez, ain't like I never had one before. Just gotta chin-up, is all." Goddamn, this guy was directly out of an episode of Leave it to Beaver sometimes, so 'gee-golly-whiz' and 'it's-not-your-fault's… until he had his dick down your throat. Then he was making all sorts of rude and lascivious demands.

Kenny paused briefly, wondering where in the hell he'd picked up a word like 'lascivious', and just figured it must've been from hanging around Kyle way too much during SAT and AP prep.

"You should be mad at me," Kenny willed himself back into the conversation. Butters was back to sticking his thumb out and smiling at passing drivers.

"Eh, you're already mad enough at yourself," he looked back with that smile. "Can't kick you while you're down. Your own guilt is enough of a punishment, I'm sure."

Kenny rolled his eyes and folded his arms. If they weren't careful, Butters' natural tendency to be right about almost everything was going to wear thin very quickly. Not that he'd say this, mind, since he already felt bad enough for dragging Butters into this in the first place. He'd trusted Kenny, for fuck's sake, and Kenny had to be his usual idiot self and let him down.

"All right," Butters turned around, hands on his hips and eyebrows high on his forehead, pulling Kenny out of his head. "You're no good to us mopin' around. What's it gonna take to get you to stop throwin' this pity party?"

"I don't know," Kenny shrugged and pulled his hood up over his head. Never mind that it was midday in Las Vegas, that Nevada obviously had no concept of seasons because how was it _this fucking warm in December?_ "Aside from a quick and dirty fuck in the nearest bathroom?"

"Yeah, besides that," Butters deadpanned back.

"How about a quick and dirty blowjob in the nearest bathroom?"

"You're impossible," Butters groaned as Kenny chuckled to himself. "And also surprisingly easy to cheer up."

"Whatever, you fucking owe me after this morning, dude," Kenny said as his laughter died down. He'd never really woken up with anyone like that before. He usually left after he fucked people (which had irked Stan and Kyle to no end to know that they weren't an exception that one time), and anyone he actually fell asleep with was nothing more than a platonic relation. Kenny had decided to take advantage of the unique situation that morning, as well as the boner in Butters' pants, and wake him up in one of the better ways. He could still feel Butters' hand tangled lazily in his hair, could still hear those soft groans coming out of Butters' throat, could still see him arching off the bed and stuffing his free hand into his mouth when he came, like he was afraid of being heard.

"I reciprocated," Butters folded his arms.

"A hand job is not equal payback and you know it," Kenny argued half-heartedly, because really, Butters was really good at giving them. In all honesty, it had been one of those things that had ended way too soon because, seriously, you try keeping your cool with Butters whispering dirty words in your ear as his hand moved so expertly over your dick.

It was possibly the most awkward memory one could have while standing on the sidewalk, waiting for someone to pull over and give you a ride to wherever. However, when one was so caught up in another (and vice versa) that he couldn't even see the car stopped in front of him? That may have been a problem.

The driver was ever-so gracious enough to give her horn a light tap, jolting both Butters and Kenny out of their separate musings. Kenny jumped, not even going to acknowledge the fact that Butters screamed like a fucking girl when he realized they weren't alone anymore.

Kenny almost whistled—a dark red 1984 Cadillac said 'yes, please, take me wherever you're going'. The driver rolled down the passenger side window, beside which both Kenny and Butters crouched, to reveal what had to be one of the world's oldest women. She looked weathered, like she'd seen too much in too short a time, but had a smile on her face that could rival that of one Butters Stotch.

"You boys look like you could use a break," she said warmly. "Where are you off to?"

"Los Angeles, ma'am," Butters replied back politely. "If you're heading out that way—"

"As it just so happens, I am," she said and unlocked the doors to the car. Butters grin broadened as he thanked the woman profusely, reaching for the handle to the door as he said so, but Kenny caught his wrist before he could open the door.

"Ma'am, I feel it's only fair to warn you that we're a couple of hedonistic queers," he said very calmly to the woman. Butters rolled his eyes and tossed out an 'Oh-for-fuck's-sake', but it was better that they told the woman now rather than potentially get stuck in a car with some nut job who tried to exorcise them or something. The woman just looked at them pensively.

"Well, seeing how you fairies have yet to sprout wings, would you like a ride?"

Which was how Kenny and Butters found themselves sitting in the back seat of a Cadillac—_a mother-fucking Cadillac, _Kenny would have to text Kevin later—listening to this elderly woman go on about how she'd just come from… somewhere. Kenny wasn't really paying attention and Butters was rapidly threatening to fall asleep on Kenny's shoulder.

"Where in Los Angeles are you headed?" she asked.

"Oh, uh… UCLA, I guess," Kenny replied as softly as he could, so not to disturb the softly snoring someone on his shoulder. The woman nodded and punched it into her GPS. Kenny wished she wouldn't do that while she was driving—she'd lived long enough and if worse came to worse Kenny could come back. It was Butters he was worried about… it seemed that that was all he was able to worry about lately.

"Where are you boys coming from?" she asked.

"Colorado," Kenny replied.

"And how long have you been together?"

"We're not."

"Oh."

Kenny pretended to fall asleep after that… which only turned into really falling asleep, because Butters was right there and he smelled like hotel soap and sex and sweat and just _so Butters_ that Kenny couldn't help falling into a lull.

He woke sometime later to an empty back seat and some old people music playing in the front. Butters appeared to have relocated to the front seat, where he was talking very animatedly about something with the old woman, who was laughing as though she was talking to the most charming young man she'd ever met. Kenny wouldn't be surprised if that were true.

"Well, hey there, Sleeping Beauty."

Kenny supposed he'd been staring because Butters was turned around entirely in his seat, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, regarding Kenny with the warmest and most affectionate of smiles.

"You wearing a seatbelt?" he asked. Butters raised his eyebrows and rested his chin on the seat.

"I was just stretchin'," he said. "Been in the car for a few hours. Don't want an embolism or nothin'."

"Jesus, who let you on WebMD?" Kenny stretched, a smile making its way onto his face as Butters laughed just a bit. Then he caught the old woman watching him in the rearview mirror and felt his face fall.

"Will you just put your seatbelt back on?" he said and pulled his hood back up over his head. Butters rolled his eyes, but turned back around to buckle himself in nonetheless. He turned back again, a little more restricted this time, and stared at Kenny with those big blue eyes.

"You know Ida's missing an eye too?" he asked. "The right one. She had eye cancer and had it removed."

Kenny made eye-contact with the old woman in the rearview once more and felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. There was something off about this woman, an unsettling feeling worming its way into his gut. He knew this feeling—it was that feeling he always got before he got hit by a train or got eaten by a rabid pack of wolves or something. It was the unmistakable aura of death and Kenny may or may not have been on the verge of a full-blown fucking panic attack.

"Kenny, are you okay?" Butters asked.

"Fine," Kenny breathed and, for the first time in a long time, prayed to God that he was wrong.

"All right, boys," the old woman interjected as, it appeared, they moved off of the freeway. "We have to make a stop for gas. Do you boys need anything?"

"Yeah, I gotta pee," Butters stretched.

"Me too," Kenny agreed quickly, and practically shot out of the car as soon as it came to a halt in a jenky-looking Chevron station. Butters followed, waving to the old woman as she went inside to pay.

"You really okay?" Butters asked as he ran to catch up with Kenny. Kenny just grabbed Butters by the wrist and dragged him into the bathroom. When they were safe in the privacy of a stall, Kenny pushed his hood from his head and ran his hands through his hair.

"I don't like her," he said. Butters scowled and folded his arms.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "You were asleep the entire goddamn time, Kenny. She's a real nice lady. She used to be an artist, y'know? Makes her own herbal tea, drives around the country, seein' the sights… You'd probably really like her."

"No, dude," Kenny groaned and rested his forehead against the cool metal of the stall. "Just… trust me on this one, okay?"

"Kenny," Butters pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know I trust you, but trust _me_ on this one. She's not going to murder us and leave us for dead or nothin'."

"No, there's something fucking weird about her, okay?" Kenny banged his fist against the stall. "She fucking reeks of death—"

"Aw, she's not that old," Butters groaned through a reproachful glare.

"Look, I don't want anything to happen, all right?" Kenny snapped. "Now let's get our fucking shit out of her goddamned car and hitch the fuck out of here before she kills us both."

"Are you serious?" Butters laughed. "We're in the middle of fucking nowhere. You think she's gonna kill us? I _know_ we'll die out there, you son of a bitch."

"No," Kenny began very calmly. "If she crashes that car, I can't keep you safe. For Christ's sake, she's like ninety! Why the fuck do we still let the elderly do shit?"

"You think you can keep me safe?" Butters asked, incredulous. "That you can keep anyone safe, including yourself? Look, if it's your time, it's your time. You can't change that."

"Well, I'm going to keep you as safe as I fucking can," Kenny folded his arms and leaned against the stall door, daring Butters to say or do anything to prove him otherwise. Butters looked at a loss for words anyway, so he figured they were probably okay on that front, but Kenny tossed out an apology just to be safe.

"No, it's all right," Butters shook his head, a little far off. "Just… no one's ever talked to me like that. About protecting me, I mean."

Kenny nodded and looked down at the dingy floor, at his bulky construction boots and Butters' bright yellow converse shoes. He chanced a look back up and leaned his head back against the door. "I can, you know… if you want me to. But to be honest, I'm going to anyway whether you want me to or not."

"That's nice," Butters rolled his eyes. "You're overreacting. Astoundingly so."

"I promise you, I'm not," Kenny pushed off the wall and grabbed Butters' hands in his. "Dude, if anything happened to you and could've stopped it—"

Butters caught him in a kiss, though whether it was out of appreciation for the sentiment or to shut Kenny up was beyond either party. Kenny just took it as an open invitation to back Butters against the wall, cupping his face in his hands as he did so, their argument long forgotten as they became lost in each other. Kenny felt that pull in the pit of his stomach as Butters' mouth fell open, as he made that little noise somewhere between his nose and his throat as Kenny's tongue ran over the roof of his mouth.

"Jesus," Butters said softly as they broke apart for air, grinning to himself when Kenny sucked at a spot just under his jaw. "You know, I can't for the life of me get this morning out of my head. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't I still owe you?"

"Mm, you do," Kenny nosed at Butters' neck. "But, I mean, you were talking an awful lot with that woman, so if your jaw is too tired—" Butters cut him off by twisting his fingers in his hair and pulling.

"If you wanted my ass, all you had to do was ask," he whispered against Kenny's lips and, yeah, Kenny officially felt all the blood drain out of his brain and right into his cock. Butters hooked a leg around one of Kenny's and brought him into a searing kiss, humping up into his burgeoning erection as he did so. Kenny groaned and rested his forehead against Butters'.

"Don't have any lube," he breathed. Butters shook his head as he played with the fine hairs on the back of Kenny's neck.

"Don't need it," he insisted. "I'll be fine. You got a condom?"

"Yeah," Kenny nodded and pulled one out of his pocket. "Boy Scouts, 'Be Prepared', all that shit." Butters laughed.

"A real Boy Scout would have brought lube," he said and, with that, began working on undoing Kenny's fly. Kenny reciprocated the action, and soon they were both standing with their pants and undies tangled around their ankles. Both at a loss as to how they should proceed, Kenny decided to take the reins on this one and turn Butters around so that he was facing the wall. He sucked two of his fingers into his mouth, wetting them until they were just slick enough to slip into Butters without too much discomfort. He wasn't as expert in finding that sweet spot as Butters so clearly was, but after a few seconds he knew he'd found it because Butters whined so fucking high and clenched so _fucking tight_ around him that shit-fuck, enough was enough. Kenny tore the condom open with his teeth and removed his fingers.

"Wait, shit," he muttered, puzzled by the logistics for a second. "You're too short."

"I'm a perfectly good—oh," Butters gave a laugh, as if to say 'why didn't you say so?' He went up on his tiptoes, despite Kenny telling him he'd be uncomfortable, and watched, all out of breath, as Kenny rolled the condom down over his dick. He positioned himself against and began pushing slowly into Butters' entrance.

"Just go," Butters whispered, voice thin and terribly tight. Kenny just shook his head and rested his forehead against the back of Butters' neck.

"Don't wanna hurt you," he muttered and kissed him just above his shirt collar. He barely registered Butters' exasperated sigh before he felt hot, tight heat get impossibly hotter and tighter around the head of his dick.

"'m not made of glass or nothin'," Butters gave an amused laugh when he heard Kenny groan. "Now will you just get on with it and fuck me already?"

Kenny didn't need to be told twice. He slid all the way in, allowed Butters a moment to adjust, and pulled out again. He repeated the action until he hit that spot again (this time distinguished by a satisfied groan and an 'Oh, fuck yeah'). He built a rhythm, Butters thrusting back and clenching in perfect time like some sort of machine, until he couldn't do anything but worry about those absolutely gorgeous noises coming out of Butters' throat and how this was all going to be over way too soon. He tried to think about cold showers, starving children, high-waisted mom jeans—the normal sorts of atrocities one usually employed to keep from shooting his wad too soon—but Butters had chosen that moment to let his head loll back and rest on Kenny's shoulder and practically mewl out his name, how close he was, how good it all felt. Kenny squeezed his eyes shut and brought his hand around to jerk Butters in time with his thrusts. Butters came first, spurting all over Kenny's hand, the wall, and his shirt, followed soon by Kenny, who may or may not have bit down on Butters' shoulder to keep any sounds at bay.

They stood there panting for a few moments before Kenny slipped out and pulled off the condom, because if he allowed himself any more time he _would_ have fallen asleep right there, pinning Butters to the wall with his body. He knotted the condom up and tossed it on the floor so he could pull up his pants. Butters scoffed at the action and picked up the offending piece of litter directly after he'd tucked himself back into his pants.

"Animal," he muttered and gave Kenny a playful shove. He unlatched the stall and tossed the condom in the trash, sighing when he caught a glimpse of his reflection. "Cum all over my last clean shirt."

"Here," Kenny unzipped his jacket and tossed it at Butters. "I'll grab your sweater from the car."

"Thanks," Butters smiled and slipped on the hoodie. Something inside Kenny really liked the fact that Butters was in an article of clothing that was so… _his_. They both washed their hands, straightened up, and made sure they were presentable enough for the world outside before they made their way out of the bathroom altogether. Kenny noted that they were walking a little closer than they had before, and that Butters' goofy-ass smile was possibly the number one piece of incriminating evidence, but he couldn't bring himself to care. They approached the car, the old woman waiting patiently in the front seat as the tank filled. Had they really been that quick?

"Poor Ida," Butters sighed. "She's like us, y'know? No family to speak of, no real connection to the world… Sad."

"Downright depressing," Kenny nodded and slid an arm around Butters' shoulders. Butters side-eyed him and ducked out of the embrace, continuing over to the car to tell the old woman they were ready to go. Kenny got the distinct feeling that something wasn't right.

_Oh, shit_.

Kenny appeared beside Butters just as he was trying to prod her awake. '

"Deep sleeper," Butters frowned and Kenny looked at him incredulously because, really? A woman _that_ old, and his first reaction is that she's just asleep. Fucking Butters, man. Kenny crouched beside the open door and grabbed one of the woman's wrists in between his thumb and forefingers.

"What's a normal heart rate?" he asked.

"How should I know?" Butters asked, his eyebrows up in concern.

"Don't lie to me, you neurotic little fuck," Kenny narrowed his eyes. Butters rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into the pockets of Kenny's hoodie.

"Between sixty and a hundred beats per minute," he answered rather expertly. Kenny nodded in a moment of pause.

"So zero probably isn't normal, is it?"

"Kenny, what the fuck!" Butters nearly shouted and pushed at Kenny's shoulder.

"She's dead, dude," Kenny stood and brushed the imaginary dirt off of his pants.

"Are you serious?"

"As a fucking doornail," Kenny nodded. "That she's dead, not that I'm serious. I don't know much about doornails, but I'm sure they're very eclectic folk."

"Oh ha-ha-ha," Butters gave a fake laugh, verging on the brink of hysteria. "Kenny, what the fuck are we supposed to do?"

"I don't know," Kenny shrugged and folded his arms. "I may be trailer trash, but we never had to deal with too many fresh dead people."

Butters paused.

"_Fresh_ dead people?" he asked.

"I don't ask you about your personal life," Kenny shrugged and took a pensive overview of the situation. "All right, you grab her legs."

"What!" Butters choked. "Kenny, we have to call someone."

"Why?" Kenny asked and opened up the back seat. "Like you said, she didn't have any family. She was a fucking drifter with a car, dude. Now this baby has a full tank of gas, a GPS, and a guy who's always wanted to drive a Caddy."

"We're calling someone," Butters insisted.

"So they can tell us we killed her," Kenny agreed. "Nice, Butters. Run away so you can get thrown in jail. Good plan."

"We can't drive with a—_a dead woman _—in the back seat!"

"Wrap her in a blanket," Kenny shrugged. "We'll drop her at a funeral home the first chance we get."

"Are you even listenin' to yourself?" Butters laughed. "She's a human being!"

"And she's also dead," Kenny rationalized and hauled her out of the seat. "Knew I smelled it on her."

"What?"

"Nothing," Kenny shook his head. "Help me get her back here."

Butters scrambled to assist, laying her down gently in the back seat and covering her with some crud-covered blanket that made Kenny think she probably slept in this car one too many times.

"Gee, grandma sure was tired after driving all that way."

Kenny turned to glare daggers at Butters, who had just declared this about as loudly as he could.

"Just get in the car and shut up," he sighed and moved to the drivers' seat.

"Yeah," Butters nodded and got in the car. He buckled up before looking back at the mound of blankets behind him and heaving a tired sigh.

"How come weird shit like this only happens to people from South Park?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Hey guys. ** This chapter is pretty long and pretty transitional. I hope you like it anyway, because-believe it or not!-there's an end in sight.

Also, **thank you to ****everyone** for the **reviews**. It means a lot to know that you guys enjoy the story, so if you're **reading** and **enjoying**, don't forget to **drop me a line and say so**. :) If you're **reading** and **_not_ enjoying**,** I suggest that you find something else to do**. Taking a walk outside, maybe?

Anyway, the chapter. Woohoo.

* * *

><p>It started the way they always did: at first it just feels like it's a little stuffy, and then you realize that you can't breathe. It feels not unlike how Butters imagines it would be if a rhino sat on his chest, only in this scenario his chest is somehow made of rubber and can't break. Then come the shooting pains, sometimes in your arms or chest, and you know somewhere in your sane mind that it's just a panic attack, and not your final hour, that you shouldn't start belting out your swan song because all you really need is to take a chill pill and relax. The problem is knowing that and still finding that your mind believes your heart is about two seconds from exploding right out through your ribs in a bloody, gory mess.<p>

Butters tried as hard as he could to snap back into reality, but the hyperventilating had already started and in his experience it was nothing but downhill from there. His arms were locked, his shoulders all the way up to his ears, his hands gripping the seat all white-knuckled and sore as he tried in vain to remember what the therapists had told him about getting a grip and just _breathing_ for fuck's sake. And if he could do all of this before Kenny realized that anything was wrong, boy, that would just be super.

The stages of anxiety were many, but Butters didn't realize that he was already at the 'cracking all of his knuckles one by one' stage until Kenny looked over at him, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Dude, are you okay?" he asked.

That was usually the question that did him in. Butters violently shook his head 'no' and bit his lips in a last desperate attempt to keep all the crazy inside his chest. The thing about breathing, though, is that you kind of need to do it, even if you're hyperventilating. The breath he was holding burst out of him, followed by another, and another, and another, and _oh_, he did not feel well. He curled forward and rested his forehead against his knees.

"Holy shit," Kenny muttered and flicked his half-finished cigarette out the window and pulled off to the side of the road. Butters supposed he should run out of the car, but he was pretty sure he'd injured his spine by bending over and was now paralyzed.

"Dude," Kenny said softly, his voice shaky with worry, and put a hand on Butters' back. "Dude, it's okay."

Butters shook his head, because apparently he'd also lost any ability he'd had to form words, and put his hands over his ears. It didn't help so much as it gave his fingers something to pull and tug at that wasn't his hair.

"It's okay," Kenny kept repeating, rubbing big, broad circles over Butters' back. Normally, Butters would have shied away from physical contact in such a state—in fact he'd come close to kicking his roommate in the face on several occasions over the last semester alone for daring to lay a comforting hand on him. Kenny was different, somehow. In a lot of hows, actually. He could hear him breathing evenly on the other side of the car, like a metronome ticking out a smooth and steady beat that managed to bully Butters into matching it.

"That's good, dude," Kenny said with a smile as Butters sat back up. "That's damn fucking good." Butters managed a weak smile despite the onset of the next phase, which was always overwhelming nausea.

"I don't feel good," he whined and sunk low in his seat.

"Okay," Kenny nodded and unbuckled his seat, turning so he could more easily aid Butters with whatever he needed. "What'd make you feel better?"

"Not having a dead woman in the back seat," Butters moaned, the contents of his stomach going sour at the thought. He'd barely opened the door and leaned out when everything came up and spilled out onto the ground.

"Shit," he heard Kenny mutter. "Hang on, I have something." Kenny rummaged around in his bag in the back seat. He handed Butters a bottle of something that was clearly not water, which Butters had only realized after he'd taken a generous swig into his mouth.

"Mary mother of God!" he cried and spat the offending liquid onto the puddle of vomit directly beneath him. "What the hell'd you give me?"

"Vodka," Kenny shrugged.

"You could take off paint with that stuff," Butters gagged, but took another sip just to swish around his mouth. He spat and shut the door, handing the bottle back to Kenny as he did so. Kenny took it and twisted the cap back onto the top.

"McCormicks aren't fancy vodka folk," he said.

"Doesn't mean you gotta be rubbing alcohol folk," Butters sighed. His mouth was all tingly, but he'd sufficiently stopped panicking, so that was at least a plus.

"Your family has Cȋroc by the bottle, I'm sure," Kenny snorted and tossed the bottle back in his bag.

"God no, my dad hates vodka," Butters shook his head.

"What's he drink, then?" Kenny asked and restarted the car.

"Scotch, of course," Butters said. There was a moment of silence before he looked over and gave a halfhearted smile. Kenny took another moment before he rolled his eyes and pulled back onto the road.

"That's what they teach you in them fancy colleges?" he asked. "No wonder your parents pulled you out of school—I wouldn't pay anyone to teach you clever wordplay either."

Butters flipped him off, but didn't say anything else on the matter. He caught Kenny glancing over at him a few times, and after about five minutes Butters finally just snapped out a "What?"

"How long have you been having panic attacks like that?" Kenny asked and Butters pursed his lips. Normally he'd tell anyone else to go fuck themselves (or something more socially acceptable of the same meaning), but Kenny seemed to genuinely care at the very least, which was more than he could say for a lot of people who would've asked the same thing.

"Since I was thirteen," he said and propped his feet up on the dashboard. His heart was still beating wildly, which didn't do too much to convince him that he wouldn't be dying within the next few minutes. Maybe he'd let Kenny fuck him too hard back in that bathroom, and his heart was still jostled about it. Come to think of it, it hadn't been beating at its normal rate since then. _Oh god oh god oh god_.

"Hey-hey-hey!" Kenny interjected as Butters' breathing spun out of whack once more. "Come on, you were doing so good, dude."

Butters whined as Kenny brought a hand up to the back of his neck and started rubbing gentle circles with his thumb and forefingers. Odd as it was, it was at least comforting. Kenny never did seem the comforting type, but Butters supposed he probably didn't seem like the panic attack type.

Or maybe he did, for all he knew.

"You're okay," he heard Kenny say. "I won't let anything happen to you, okay?"

Butters nodded and moved to lean up against the passenger's window, watching as the scenery rolled past.

"Will you talk to me?" Butters asked, not bothering to look to see Kenny's reaction. Mostly because he knew what it was—that confused, brows-knitted-together, eyes big and wide look that made him want to keep Kenny in a permanent state of confusion because, come on, it was kind of an adorable face.

"Okay," Kenny said with a tone that didn't quite match that of the face in Butters' mind, but Butters didn't think too hard on it. "What do you want me to talk to you about?"

"Anything that'll keep me from remembering there's a dead woman in our back seat," Butters said softly. Preferably something that would lull him to sleep.

"So, the conflict in the Middle East okay with you?" Kenny asked.

"Whatever gets you there," Butters shot back without the slightest hint of sarcasm.

Blessedly, Kenny seemed to have decided that was a bad idea and started sifting through his repertoire of conversation topics.

"I don't know, dude," Kenny sighed.

"Aren't the Irish known for their fascinating storytelling?" Butters asked. He could hear Kenny's eyes rolling in their sockets.

"I don't have a story to tell," he said. "I'm not all that great at talking. We don't really talk in my family, y'know? We yell, sure, but talk? Like, about how you feel and shit? Keeping quiet was just what you were supposed to do. Like one time, Kevin and I were actually getting along for once and laughing and shit before my dad came into my room and told us to shut the fuck up."

"Got anything less depressing?"

"Sorry my life isn't an episode of The fucking Waltons," Kenny muttered and turned on the radio. He kept the volume low, assuming Butters wanted to sleep, probably, and sifted through until he landed on what had to have been a classic rock station. He hummed along with most of the songs, drumming on the wheel just softly enough to let Butters know he wasn't alone, that Kenny was right there next to him and… well, he'd said he'd protect him. That was all he could ask, right?

He must have thought Butters was asleep, because after a while he started singing along to the songs. First to Hotel California, and then to just about every song that came on after that. They somehow inexplicably reminded Butters of Kenny's dad…of blue collar folk in general, really. Plus, Kenny had a pretty nice voice on him, which is never a bad thing in a road trip partner. He did end up getting a little out of hand singing Radar Love, though, and Butters couldn't help but turn and give him a look. Kenny immediately attempted to pretend he hadn't been doing anything, about as successfully as one could after having been caught mid-dance.

"Whatever," Kenny grumbled as Butters began laughing uncontrollably. "Seriously, go fuck yourself."

The laughter had been enough to calm Butters into an actual state of calm, which was beneficial. What was even more, it appeared he'd calmed down enough to fall into some form of sleep. It wasn't anything particularly restful, just a symptom of being at ease and constantly moving in a car. He could still hear Kenny, who'd gone back to singing and drumming along to the radio until the station went fuzzy. By the time Butters opened his eyes they were on a familiar-looking freeway in horrible traffic, which led Butters to believe that he really had fallen into actual sleep. That was good, he supposed, but looking over at Kenny didn't do anything to support that notion. He was straight-faced with a hand fisted in his hair, elbow propped up against the window as he focused on the task at hand.

"Are we there already?" Butters mumbled and sat up.

"We've been twelve miles away from UCLA for the last thirty minutes," Kenny groused out. "And I'm about to jump out of this car and murder every single one of these fuckers because _this isn't how normal goddamned people drive!_" he shouted the last part, much to the dismay of Butters' ears.

"Oh, calm down," Butters sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. At this point, Butters had pretty much lost all hope of being able to proceed through the rest of this trip like a normal human being. There was a dead woman in the back seat—they'd passed normality a fuck of a long time ago. Kenny didn't seem to be too bothered with the fact that there was a _dead woman_ in the _back seat_. It was just one of those things Butters didn't think you should be able to forget, you know?

Kenny just looked at him with that calculating stare of his, the one that made Butters feel like he was three feet tall, and turned back to the unmoving traffic.

"You should call Wendy and tell her I'm dropping you at the school," he said. "So she can come get you."

"Wha—why?" Butters asked, his brows pinched together in a confused frown.

"Because I'm not taking you with me to get rid of this body," Kenny replied. "You've flipped the fuck out enough for today, okay? I don't want to put you through anymore shit."

"Kenny, I'm not letting you do that alone," Butters said very pointedly.

"That's very nice of you, but-"

"Who's talkin' 'bout nice?" Butters asked. "If I leave you to deal with this by yourself you'll burn the whole damn state down."

"I would not," Kenny rolled his eyes.

"You weren't planning on setting fire to the car," Butters stated, eyebrow raised in disbelief. Kenny was well-known throughout not just South Park, but throughout the entirety of Park County to have a penchant for blowing shit up.

"No," Kenny shook his head facetiously, which only led Butters to believe that he'd at least given the idea some thought.

"'cause that's arson, y'know," Butters pointed out.

"Only if there're people around to witness it," Kenny supplied oh-so helpfully. "Which happens to be everywhere out here so no, I wasn't going to set the car on fire, o ye of little faith."

"Sure," Butters said and folded his arms.

"Well, whatever I'm doing it's not going to fucking involve you, so call Wendy and tell her she's picking you up on campus," Kenny said very firmly, honking as loudly as he possibly could when someone cut him off.

"You know what may help," Butters began and unbuckled his seatbelt, but Kenny cut him off.

"Don't fucking touch me right now I am so _fucking_ pissed off," he snapped and gripped the steering wheel like it was the last thing tethering him to this plane of existence. Butters sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket, figuring it was probably best to leave Kenny if he was this upset. Butters had seen Stuart McCormick in similar fits of rage, and even though Kenny wasn't even close to comparable, it was probably a good idea to let him do what he felt he had to do.

Which was how Butters found himself in an old Honda Civic with Wendy, cruising down the brightly-lit streets of Los Angeles toward her apartment. Wendy was just shaking her head, still out of sorts about the way Kenny had practically pushed Butters into her car and had torn off down the street without even so much as a 'see ya later'.

"What an asshole," she said. "If you tell me he's been like that this entire time I will personally kick his ass for you."

"What makes you think I can't kick his ass for myself?" Butters laughed. Wendy laughed too, but made it entirely clear that she was completely serious not a moment later. Butters rolled his eyes. He and Kenny had scrapped around as kids, mostly when playing superheroes and villains, and admittedly Kenny had had the advantage back then. However, Butters had been in various dance classes since then—he dared anyone to match the strength and agility of a dancer. If needed, Butters could beat Kenny's chain-smoking ass within an inch of his life if need be.

Luckily, that wasn't an issue.

"No, no, he's been great," Butters found himself defending Kenny's character a little too strongly anyway. "It's just... he had something to take care of before he settled in."

"He should be careful," Wendy said in that warning tone. "The cops here aren't nearly as inept as the ones back home."

"No cops are as inept as the ones back home," Butters pointed out, to which Wendy raised a pointer finger in acknowledgement.

"True," she nodded and then looked over at Butters with what turned into an increasingly concerned look on her face. "He... he didn't tell you what he had to go do?"

"No, he did," Butters shifted in his seat. He was only half-lying, after all. He knew what Kenny was doing, just not what he was _doing_. That wasn't enough of a lie to show up on Wendy's radar, right? He turned in his seat and gave her an earnest look. This was serious time, and if it was one thing people had a hard time with, it was taking Butters seriously.

"Listen," he began, "he's a good guy and I really do kinda like him enough to want to have him around, so don't be too hard on him, okay?"

"I'm not being hard on him," Wendy said very plainly. "I'm looking out for you. There's a difference. I love you to the ends of the earth—no one hurts my Butters."

"Well, when you put it like that," Butters rolled his eyes through a half-smile. He loved Wendy, really he did, but sometimes her general mistrust of people was a little trying for Butters, since he was one of those people who put his faith in just about everybody. They did balance each other out, though, which was why they'd always worked so well together. They were a peer counseling team in high school and no one had a higher success rate than them for that exact reason—Wendy could weed out the bullshitters and liars, while Butters knew who was bullshitting and lying to hide a larger underlying problem.

Although Butters was pretty sure he had the advantage on Kenny, even if Wendy (or Kenny, for that matter) didn't think so.

"Here we are!" Wendy beamed as they pulled into the parking garage below her structure. Butters grabbed his things and Kenny's (which Kenny had assured Butters he would absolutely not need) and followed her up to the second floor. Their apartment door was decorated with several PETA posters and Animal Rights Activism notices. Butters wondered if those things were even allowed out in plain sight, or if the apartment's occupants had just run their landlord right into submission. Wendy caught him looking at the door and just rolled her eyes and shook her head in the universal sign for 'don't even fucking ask'. Butters also managed to bite back the comment that Stan would probably love the decor. He'd save it just in case he needed to piss her off.

Then he remembered that Kenny made a mention of Stan and Kyle being together now or something and started snickering. When Wendy looked at him for an explanation, Butters just shook his head and said something along the lines of 'you wouldn't think it's funny', except that she probably would have. Bebe had predicted as much on several occasions, so it wasn't as thought it would have come as a complete surprise. He got the feeling it was one of those things he probably wasn't supposed to broadcast though, and so kept it to himself for now.

The inside of the apartment was nice and clean, just like Butters expected it would be. Wendy was kind of anal retentive about cleanliness and everything having its proper place. She worked best in an uncluttered environment, which always struck Butters as such a weird excuse for why she cleaned so obsessively—who didn't work best without clutter?

"All right," Wendy began as she made her way into the kitchen. "I have to take out the trash, but do you want some tea when I come back?

"Sure," Butters shrugged. "Anywhere specific I should put my stuff?"

"Oh, just by the couch is fine," Wendy said, tying together the drawstrings of what looked to be a dangerously full trash bag. "It folds out into a futon. If you don't mind sharing it with your new BFF, it's pretty comfy."

"I think we'll be fine," Butters tried to fight a smile. It was rude to have sex in a guest's living room; he was just going to have to remember that and get over it.

"You need any help?" he asked as Wendy hauled the bag off of the floor. She was just small enough for Butters to believe the trash bag would have the advantage going down all those stairs if she wasn't careful. Wendy just flipped him off and told him, rather politely, to please go fuck himself.

"I'll be back in a second," she said. "Make yourself at home."

Butters nodded and gave her a little wave as she left the apartment. He walked around the living room a little bit, taking inventory of the house's decor and such before he made his final judgments about how much Wendy's roommates actually sucked. There was a poster of Time's Square above the couch, another of Audrey Hepburn by the TV, and a few LP sleeves tacked into the wall. Most of them were from bands he'd never even heard of, so Butters really wasn't sure how to judge those. Luckily Wendy was back before he could start scouting through the hall and down through the bedrooms. So he was a nosy little fuck... what was wrong with that?

"Come and talk to me," Wendy called from the kitchen. Butters walked into the kitchen and sat at the little table against one of the bright white walls. Wendy was pouring water into a kettle and setting it on the stove in a way that made Butters smile. Something his mother had always taught him to do when there was a distressed party at his doorway was to offer them tea. It was warm, it was soothing, and it was a hell of a lot easier to manage than baking a pecan pie. Save those for the worst times, his mother had always said. One thing about South Park that he would definitely miss was how neighborly everyone was there. Something about big cities just didn't breed the same kind of friendly atmosphere that small towns did.

"I can't believe your dad," Wendy shook her head as she pulled a mug and a box of tea out of a cupboard. "What kind do you want? I have herbal, chamomile, green... I've even got this weird Orange spice kind that my ex-boyfriend really liked. Kind of makes me gag though."

"I'll take some chamomile," Butters smiled and pulled off his—_Kenny's_—sweater. Kenny had his in the car still. "And are you really surprised about my dad?"

"No, not really," Wendy sighed and took a seat across from Butters. "I just wish there was something I could do."

"Bebe suggested slashing his tires," Butters said lightly. "Or keying his car. Something about his new car."

"He got a new car?" Wendy asked, her brown eyes big and almost as round as the rest of her face. "Where on earth did he get the money?"

"Not payin' for my education anymore," Butters shrugged. "Why not treat himself to a brand new car?"

"What an asshole!" Wendy exclaimed and smacked her hands on the table. "What's your mom have to say about it?"

"She just repainted the house the entire time I was home," Butters sighed. "Didn't expect much more. What can I say? The woman's insane."

"You sure it was okay to leave her with your dad?" Wendy asked, eyebrows knitted high in her forehead.

"Should be fine," Butters nodded. "Not like he's a homicidal maniac or nothin'. Just a homophobic, self-hatin' sonofabitch is all."

"Those are usually the ones you have to watch out for," Wendy pointed out. Butters nodded, but didn't say much more on the matter. Which was just as well, since the kettle started whistling and Wendy went to pour the water and steep the teabag. She handed him said mug—one from Disneyland, it looked like—and a small honey bear.

"Thanks, Wendy," Butters smiled and squeezed a generous amount of honey into the mug. Wendy handed him a spoon and sat down across from him again. She was looking at him like Kenny looked at just about everyone, sizing him up and trying to discern the best course of action conversation-wise.

"So, Bebe tells me you and her made the beast with two backs while you were staying with her," she said very plainly. "Care to comment on that?"

"'The beast with two backs'?" Butters repeated with a raised eyebrow. "That's a little archaic."

"She said she 'fucked your twinkie little brains out until you couldn't fuck anymore'," Wendy rephrased. "And that's a direct quote. Care to comment on that?"

"Not as much as I'd care to end this conversation before it starts," Butters said and sipped at his tea. He grimaced—still too hot.

"Too late," Wendy smiled and leaned forward with that inquisitive smile on her face. "So?"

"So what?" Butters asked and drummed his fingers against the table. "Heard you and Kenny did a little hanky-panky way back when, you don't see me askin' you about it."

"Butters!"

"To be fair, it's only 'cause Bebe told me everything she knows," he laughed as Wendy reached across the table and smacked him on the arm.

"You're such an asshole," Wendy rolled her eyes. "I was young and stupid. What's your excuse?"

"I told you," Butters folded his arms and sat back in his chair. "Bebe made a very generous offer that would have been rude to refuse. To reveal any details of our exploits would be ungentlemanly."

"I meant about you and Kenny," Wendy smirked. Butters pursed his lips and shook his head.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Butters, you have cum _all_ over your shirt," Wendy pointed out and Butters immediately flew forward to hide the offending stain from view. Wendy smiled and stood.

"Someone's been having fun," she hummed and held his face in her hands. "Fuck in my living room and you're both dead." She kissed him on the forehead and left Butters to finish his tea in the kitchen. Instead Butters just sent Kenny a text, Wendy's address and a little _be safe_, before he downed the rest of his tea and went to join Wendy in the living room.

Butters decided to go to bed early, since Wendy announced that she needed to go to work early and was heading to bed anyway. Kenny still wasn't back yet—in fact, Butters hadn't even heard from him since he'd dropped him with Wendy—and Butters was starting to get a little worried. Nix that—a lot worried. He'd officially passed the point of panic attacks and was moving straight into stress hives territory. His palms were now covered in little red spots, not bothersome enough to worry about but itchy enough to drive anyone mad.

But he tried to look past it. He helped Wendy make up the futon, and said good night to her as got ready for bed. He brushed his teeth, gave his eye a rinse, and slipped back into Kenny's hoodie before he crawled under the sheets on the little makeshift bed. Wendy walked out, in her plaid pajama pants and a bright pink Breast Cancer Awareness t-shirt, hair falling in soft black waves down past her shoulders, and gave him a smile.

"Do you want me to lay out here with you until he comes back?"

Butters just nodded and curled right into her the moment she laid down beside him. They stayed like that for hours, as one by one Wendy's roommates came home, until at one in the morning when there came a soft knock on the front door. Wendy got up to answer the door, but Butters beat her to it, unlocking all the little doodads on the door until he was face to face with Kenny on the other side. Butters didn't even think twice before he threw his arms around Kenny's neck and kissed him square on the mouth. Kenny kissed back, though only for a moment before he realized that they had company.

"Hey Wendy," he said softly as Butters went about stroking his hair and patting just about every inch of him, making sure he was all there and all safe.

"Hi Kenny," Wendy replied and moved to lock up the door. "I have to be up for work in a few hours, so I'll talk to you guys tomorrow, all right?"

Butters and Kenny both nodded and waved as she left down the hallway. Butters turned back to Kenny and kissed him again. He then pulled away and socked Kenny right on the arm.

"Ow!" Kenny exclaimed quietly and grabbed his arm. "Goddamn it, what was that for?"

"For scarin' the shit out of me, you asshole," Butters whispered back harshly and walked back to the futon. Kenny followed and sat down beside him, still rubbing his arm like Butters had actually done any damage.

"Sorry," he said. "My phone died right after I got your text. I had to hitch all the way back here after I got rid of the car."

"What'd you do with it?" Butters asked.

"Well, after wandering around for a little while, I ended up in what the folks around here call 'the ghetto'," Kenny began. "You'd think being from one myself I'd have been able to reason with them. Nay-nay—people don't take too kindly to white trash anywhere out here, apparently."

"How'd you get rid of the body, Kenny?" Butters scowled.

"I abandoned the car somewhere in the ghetto and called the cops," Kenny shrugged.

"Anyone see you do it?" Butters asked.

"How should I know?" Kenny groaned and flopped down onto the bed. "Point is that I took care of it."

Butters nodded and breathed deeply. Kenny was okay. They were okay. That's all that mattered, really. Butters reached out to run a hand over Kenny's chest and paused. There was something different…

"You're wearing my sweater," Butters said. Kenny looked down at his body and gave a little laugh.

"Yeah, you left it in the car," he looked up at Butters with that earnest look behind his eyes. The turquoise fleece didn't make them pop in the same way that they did with Butters' eyes (which was really why he'd decided to stick with the color in the first place), but there was something about Kenny wearing something that belonged to him that was so undeniably hot.

"You look good in it," he croaked, mouth all dry as he tried not to think about licking every inch of Kenny's body. Kenny grinned lazily, head obviously in the same place, and brought a hand up to tangle in Butters' hair.

"You don't look so bad yourself," he said and brought him down into a kiss.

Maybe Wendy wouldn't notice the condom wrappers and the small packets of lube laying on top of Butters' bag the next morning.


	8. Chapter 8

So, I think we may only have **a chapter **and** an epilogue **after this. It came up kind of fast, but I don't want to draw this out for too long.

Thank you to** scarlettshazam **for the shameless promotion. Whether you're here because of her or because you just stumbled upon this one day and decided to stick around with it, I'm grateful for each and every one of you. Your reviews never fail to make me happy. :)

I feel like **trigger warnings** for Kenny deaths are kind of futile, but I really don't want to get yelled at, so... warning?

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><p>It was kind of funny, Kenny figured. Normally he prayed for his partners to fall asleep, because he hated making small talk after sex almost more than anything. Because, come on, what do you say to someone after that? "Thanks for letting me impale you with my dick. That was way cool of you." It was funny, because of everyone Kenny had ever had sex with, Butters was the only one he'd ever wanted to talk to afterward… mostly because he would've thought that the aforementioned 'thank you' was hilarious. Butters was sweet and funny, and he wouldn't have bothered Kenny with anything trivial or, conversely, anything too heavy. He always had your best interest at heart, never let you go more than a few minutes without smiling, and gave head like there was a drought coming… all three of which Kenny believed were most definitely related.<p>

He leaned over Butters and kissed him on the cheek, lightly shaking him into a half-assed state of awake.

"What?" Butters mumbled into the pillow.

"IPod?" Kenny asked simply, making sure to kiss him as he did. If Butters was going to sleep, Kenny was going to make damned well sure that he had some entertainment… even if Butters had some pretty shitty stuff on there. Butters just gave him a sleepy grin and stretched his back out in a smooth, kissable curve.

"Next to my bag with my phone," he laughed sleepily as Kenny nipped at his shoulder blade. Kenny nodded and slid slightly off of the bed, grabbing the device off of the floor and stopping only slightly when he noticed that there was a new text message on Butters' phone. He picked it up and inspected.

"Hey, dude, your aunt texted you," he frowned as he read the ID, but Butters was asleep again. Kenny frowned and settled back against the futon and looked at the phone contemplatively. This was the part where the angel and demons appeared on his shoulders and argued. It was wrong to read someone's texts while they were asleep, right? It was an invasion of privacy and all that, and Kenny knew that if the roles were reversed he wouldn't ever have forgiven Butters for such a heinous breach of trust. He should, and, more importantly, _could _wait until Butters woke up, or could have even prodded him awake and made him read the text, but he didn't. The facts were these: Kenny was a sneaky little bastard—he always had been—and although reading someone's texts while they were sleeping wasn't sneaky so much as it was downright snooping… it didn't matter. This woman had tossed Butters aside like a sack of rotten potatoes and now she was texting him? What the fuck could she possibly want now?

'_Honey, I feel awful about the other day. If you're in LA I'd love to see you. Lunch in town like old times?'_

Kenny furrowed his brow and stared at the words, reading them over and over until he'd come to one simple conclusion.

He didn't like this woman. She wanted something, and Butters was going to take the bait, because that was what Butters did. Kenny tossed both the phone and iPod to the side, right beside his head, and shifted so he could look at Butters.

"Jesus Christ!" he yelped and quickly moved to cover his mouth. Butters was staring at him blankly, almost like those creepy people who slept with their eyes open. Kevin did that sometimes, and Kenny was never quite convinced that he too wasn't some form of demon spawn from another plane of existence. Butters, as it turned out, was indeed staring at him, eyebrows low and face stoic.

"Dude," Kenny began, his eyes going wide as Butters sat up and grabbed his phone.

"It woulda been marked as 'read' anyway," he said softly, and Kenny knew instantly that he'd crossed a line. "You think I wouldn't notice or somethin'?"

Kenny shook his head and watched as Butters scanned over the text, maybe audibly gulped down the lump in his throat when he looked back over at Kenny and raised an eyebrow. He kind of wished he wouldn't do that… it was one of the most patronizing things Kenny had ever seen and he knew Butters absolutely didn't intend it to be so.

Or maybe he did, with the way he was looking at Kenny like he deserved the electric chair for reading one lousy text message.

"You think she's gonna kill us too?" he asked flatly, almost daring Kenny to give the wrong answer. Kenny sighed and smacked his head against the futon. The good thing about this was at least that Kenny didn't have to bother making up some bullshit lie about what he'd been doing or what he'd been doing, since Butters was both intelligent and intuitive enough to start piecing the puzzle together on his own. This was also beneficial because Kenny got the feeling that, if there was one thing Butters couldn't stand, it was a liar.

"I think she was quick to turn on you," Kenny decided on replying. "And you should probably think about it before you meet her is all."

"She's not a part of the mafia—"

"That you know of."

"Kenny, she's my aunt!" Butters gave an incredulous laugh and propped himself up on his elbows. "Look, I know you want to protect me and all, a-an' you gotta know I appreciate it, but you don't know jack shit about any of this, all right? If you wanna know somethin', you ask me instead of snoopin' around like I wouldn't let you know anything you wanted."

"Dude, I'm looking out for you," Kenny insisted, rolling over so he could look into Butters' eyes. "I'm sorry about the text thing, but trust me—"

"You're overreacting," Butters groaned sleepily and rubbed his fingers over his temples. "Listen Ken, if she lets us live with her? She's close to a lot of cool places in Hollywood, which means we could find jobs and our own place… an' in the meantime she makes the best pecan pie this side of the Rockies. This could turn into somethin' real good for us."

Kenny completely ignored that he was included in all of this. Best case scenario, this woman wasn't up to any nasty tricks and would in fact invite Butters to stay with her indefinitely. Any sane woman would demand that Kenny move out within the month. Instead of this, though, Kenny focused on how Butters took his hands in his and kept his eyes fixed upon their fingers.

"I can take care of you too, y'know," he said softly. "'m not just blonde hair and a nice ass."

"You're also a pretty nice dick, too," Kenny grinned, laughing when Butters gave him a light punch on the arm.

"Like you'd know," Butters laughed right alongside. "Practically the only one you've seen.

"Whatever, I've seen more pussy than you'd know what to do with," Kenny grinned.

"And somehow I'm not too upset about that," Butters said and laughed when Kenny stuck out his tongue. It was strange: Butters kind of made him feel like he'd always imagined normal kids felt, all light and carefree and just so happy to sit there and _laugh_ with someone for a few seconds… with someone who would never think of judging you for being who you were, with someone who was starting to make him miss his crappy childhood, make him wish he was a kid again.

Who was he kidding—they were only eighteen. In the grand scheme of things, they _were_ kids still.

"C'mere," Butters yawned and brought Kenny close into him. "Get some sleep. Knowing Wendy she'll make us leave when she goes to work anyway."

Kenny yawned back and gave a sleepy nod as he curled into Butters' warmth. He smelled mostly like sex now, that sweat-and-musk scent that permeated all of Kenny's senses and made Butters smell so undeniably _him_. Not like Butters, not like Leopold… those were names, personas that he had to portray to the rest of the world. Like this he was just himself, like they were just themselves, together, in one fleeting moment. When they woke up, Kenny would be Kenny and Butters would be Butters and the world would be The World and it'd undoubtedly be just as shitty as it was right now. Except the only difference was that Kenny and Butters cared about The World, where these two people, who they were now, who they were underneath everything, didn't give two shits about anything. Only maybe they did care a little about each other.

For the first time since he'd been a small child, Kenny fell asleep with a smile on his face.

Kenny had never been in love before. He loved people, sure—he wasn't some cold, unfeeling sociopath after all. He loved Karen and his mom, he loved Stan and Kyle and the Broflovskis, and on some days he even admitted that he loved his dad and Kevin. But being _in love_ was a foreign concept.

People had often described it as caring so much for someone that you'd die for them. Kenny always figured that people meant that figuratively, since he didn't know many people who actually had to make the decision between life and death, but if that was really the case he must have been the second coming of Christ if that was the case. He'd been dying for everyone for the better part of two decades and, sorry, but the idea of being in love with that many people is just plain retarded.

Other people described it as being so attached to someone that you would die without them. Or, if you didn't die, you sure felt like you were going to. Again, spoken by people who didn't really understand the finer points of death. Given the choice, Kenny would rather remain alone for the rest of his life than willingly go through something even remotely as painful as death without a goddamned good reason for it.

"Don't listen to those fucks."

Kenny could still see Kyle, face all surly as he leaned out his bedroom window, sucking on the back end of a cigarette like Sheila (or Stan, for that matter) wouldn't kill him if she'd found out.

"Love isn't one of those things that's the same for everyone," Kyle had said contemplatively as he passed the cigarette to Kenny. They'd started smoking together and it was something they continued to do every time they had a moment alone together.

"You love Stan?" Kenny had asked, blowing a plume of smoke out into the crisp mountain air.

"Of course I do," Kyle had snatched the cigarette back. He was wearing his green trapper hat… that should've been the first clue. He hadn't worn that thing since the sixth grade when his mom finally let him start keeping his hair short. "Yeah, I might not say it all the time, and sure he pisses me off sometimes when he gets all depressed and shit, but he makes me happy. Like, I get this feeling when I see him… I always have. We just click, you know? That's the most important thing."

"You're pissed?"

"Of course I'm pissed—I told you not to fuck on my couch!"

_Wait a second. _

That wasn't what Kyle had said.

"Sorry Wendy, he's very persuasive."

"Persuasive my ass, Stotch. You were practically fornicating by the time I closed the door to my room."

Kenny groaned and rolled over, tragically without the warm body against which he'd fallen asleep only hours before. He also seemed to be short a blanket, which only proved to be a problem when he looked up and saw one of Wendy's roommates, wide-eyed and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of him.

"Oh, my God," she muttered as Kenny grabbed a pillow and covered himself.

"Uh, hi," he gave a little wave.

"Wendy!" she called shakily and made a break for the kitchen.

"Hey, it's just a dick," Kenny rolled his eyes. "Half the world's got one."

"Oh, for God's sake," he heard Wendy sigh. He didn't even have time to feel any smug satisfaction at embarrassing the shit out of this girl before Wendy appeared in the living room and gave him a look that could've frightened the paint right off of the walls.

"Sorry, Stacey," she said and laid a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. "This is Kenny… from back home."

Kenny winked and gave her a little salute as Wendy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose—undoubtedly a habit she'd picked up from Sharon and Stan—and shifted her weight.

"Kenny, will you please just put some pants on?" she asked very levelly as her roommate pushed past her and into the kitchen.

"Oh, come on!" the girl cried. "Wendy, there's another one in here!"

"Hi, I'm Butters."

Kenny laughed as Stacey pushed Butters out of the kitchen and back into the living room. At least Butters had had the decency to pull on his underpants before he'd left the bed (though probably only because Wendy had threatened castration otherwise). This, apparently, didn't stop Wendy from gathering all the clothes off of the floor and tossing them right in their faces.

"Both of you get dressed," she said as Kenny slipped back into the pair of boxers she'd thrown managed to land on top of his head and Butters pulled on his jeans. "If you think you're going to stay here in my apartment and fuck all day, you've got another thing coming."

Kenny laughed even harder when Butters made a face behind Wendy's back, and may have lost any ability to function like a normal human being when Wendy turned around, socked him in the shoulder, and told him to stop fucking around.

"Hey Ken, can I borrow a shirt?" Butters asked and pounced back on the futon, nuzzling into Kenny's neck. "Seein' how you ruined my last one and all."

"Yeah," Kenny nodded. "'Fuck Me I'm Irish' should be clean."

Butters wrinkled his nose and shook his head, laughing when Kenny pretended to be offended.

"Guys, seriously," Wendy said with only the _slightest_ hint of exasperation. "You're very cute, I'll give you that, but I have to go to work and I can't leave you guys here."

"Why the fuck not?" Kenny frowned as Butters rolled off of him and began rummaging through his bag for a clean shirt.

"If it were just me living here, I wouldn't care," Wendy sighed like she was dealing with a petulant two-year-old. "But I have roommates who don't want to live in fear of walking in on you two fucking each other's brains out. So, we're going. Hop to it."

Kenny was just about to shoot back an argument, but Butters threw his bright green 'Fuck Me I'm Irish' t-shirt at him and gave him a warning look. Grudgingly, Kenny pulled his shirt over his head and didn't say another word. Wendy seemed to take this as a victory and gave a final nod before she headed back down to her room to finish getting ready. Kenny rolled over on the futon and sighed; Butters was texting, otherwise Kenny was certain he would've asked what was wrong.

"She always this much of a bitch?" Kenny asked instead. Butters looked up from his phone at that, one eyebrow cocked in a rather scrutinizing way before his gaze flicked back to his text.

"My aunt wants to meet us later this morning after my uncle goes to work," he replied simply. Kenny's stomach immediately knotted up at the thought.

"Dude, come on," he said as Butters stood, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand. "She was ready to fucking disown you!"

Butters rolled his eyes and took off for the bathroom without another word. Kenny supposed that meant that he should do the same, but he hadn't brought a toothbrush with him (because who thought of shit like that when they were running away from home) and so for the last few days had kind of just been stealing Butters' toothpaste and running it over his teeth with his fingers when the opportunity presented itself. Didn't much matter anyway—the McCormick children had been to the dentist a total of two times in their lives, and where Kenny was lucky enough that he got a new set of teeth every time he came back into this miserable excuse for an existence, Kevin and Karen were not. All three of them had crooked teeth, yeah, but Kevin had chipped a fair few of his (in some rather unsightly places too) and Karen's wisdom teeth were coming in and shifting her entire mouth out of whack.

That would be Kenny's first act of affluence: get his baby sister's teeth fixed.

_Fuck_, the thought alone just kind of made Kenny's head hurt a little bit… like someone was trying to pull his eyeballs out of the back of his head with fishhooks.

Just then, Wendy came out of her room, fastening an earring as she gave Kenny a once-over… probably to make sure he wasn't naked again. In her defense, it was exactly the kind of thing Kenny would do to piss her off, so at least she got points for being astute.

"So," she began. "You and Butters, huh?"

Kenny rolled his eyes and stuffed his dirty clothes back into his bag. Sorry, but they weren't going to talk about this. They just weren't. It was enough when people had found out about him sleeping with guys in general, everyone looking at him like he was suddenly a person of highest interest. Somehow a sexually wayward youth was a bigger deal than someone who'd lived on welfare, been put into foster care, or who died and regenerated on a regular basis. Somehow, after all of that, Kenny figured people wouldn't really find his morbid fascination with sucking dick so interesting, but lo and behold it was all anyone ever really wanted to talk about.

"Yeah," was all he managed to reply before he stood, all prepared to go back to the bathroom until Wendy held up a halting hand to his chest.

"If you hurt him, I will fucking end you," she said very plainly. "And I don't mean in a quick-and-painless 'death is your punishment' kind of way. I mean I castrate you and leave you to wander the world a sexless eunuch kind of way. Got it?"

"Would you calm the fuck down, Bikini Kill?" Kenny rolled his eyes and held his hands up in that universal sign of defeat. "No one's gonna hurt anyone. Trust me, I don't think I could even if I wanted to."

Wendy's look softened at that. She lowered her hand and cocked her head, suddenly looking at Kenny like he was a dog with three legs or something.

"Oh, my God," she said. Kenny could see the cogs turning behind her eyes and he didn't like it one bit. He couldn't even make a break for the bathroom before her eyes bugged out and she got that stupid look of satisfaction on her face. "You care about him. Like, actually care about him."

"Aw, fuck," Kenny groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. "Wendy, please don't start this, okay? I've got a fucking headache."

Wendy just looked at him with a knowing, complacent smile on her face and put her hair up in a ponytail.

"You so care about him," she sing-songed. "Kenny and Butters, sitting in a tree—" She laughed when she saw the obvious look of irritation on his face and gave him what appeared to be a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, but what was actually just her need to hold onto something as the laughter shook through her body. It brought Kenny back to the days when she and Stan were together, when they stopped fighting long enough to bond over pointing and laughing at really trivial shit like they were still in grade school. Kenny supposed that was just what happened when you stayed in a somewhat consistent relationship with your elementary school sweetheart.

"I'm not," Wendy gasped. "I'm not making fun of you. It's just both the strangest and the sweetest thing I've ever heard."

Kenny would've retorted if he hadn't shared the sentiment. It was weird that he felt so much for Butters after, what, a weekend? It wasn't normal.

Then again, Kenny had never been known for his adherence to normality and figured he should probably just let it go. However, Kenny was also a McCormick and things that he didn't understand generally just tended to either confuse him or piss him off. Shit, that was why he'd known he wanted to fuck guys so long before he'd told anyone. It was why he'd taken so long to have sex—proper sex—with a girl, and now here that girl was telling him that he had feelings he was only vaguely aware he'd had himself.

"Oh, what?" Wendy laughed and braced her hands on her hips. "It's a good thing. I'm happy for you."

"Why?" Kenny grimaced and shifted his weight. This wasn't what he wanted to be doing right now. He'd had every intention of marching down into that bathroom, pushing Butters against the wall, and sucking his dick so hard that he came into next Tuesday.

Whatever that meant.

"I'm happy for you," Wendy began as she straightened the collar of his t-shirt, "because you both deserve to be happy more than any two people I know. Who's to say you can't kill two birds with one stone, you know?"

"Who's killin' what now?" Butters appeared at the end of the hallway, checking his phone again as he walked blindly back to the futon.

"Nothing," Wendy shook her head. Her words were still ringing in Kenny's ears. She thought he deserved to be happy—that Kenny McCormick deserved to be happy like Butters Stotch, cheeriest fucker on the planet, deserved to be happy.

"All right, if we leave now, I can drop you guys somewhere," Wendy clapped her hands together. Butters looked from his bag to her and laughed.

"What the hell're you wearin'?"

Kenny turned back to her and suddenly found himself stifling his own laughter.

"Oh, what now, you assholes?" Wendy scowled. She was in a yellow waitress's uniform, sporting a _golden _vest that was all decked out in kitschy buttons. This, of course, didn't hold a candle to her gold, spray-painted tennis shoes.

"Oh, Liberace is rolling over in his grave," Kenny shook his head. "Where in God's name do you work?" Wendy extended both of her hands in a dual 'fuck you' before she grabbed her keys and purse off of the table by the door.

"I have time to take you shitheads wherever before I have to be at work," she said. "As long as you can promise me that I won't have to come bail you out of jail or find someone to defend you if you get convicted for arson."

"Why does everyone think I'm going to light this state on fire?" Kenny rolled his eyes and grabbed Butters' sweater off of the futon, catching Wendy's eye and fucking _daring_ her to say anything about it as he slipped it on and zipped it up. He and Butters wore roughly the same size of clothing, at least on the top half, but that was only because Kenny bought his shirts a size bigger to distract from how skinny he actually was.

"Actually," Butters began and went to join her by the door, "my aunt wants to meet us down by the pier."

"All right," Wendy nodded and looked back expectantly at Kenny. "You coming?"

"I'd be more willing if I didn't think that his aunt was going to tie cinderblocks to our feet and toss us off the pier," Kenny stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed them out the door.

"For the last time," Butters rolled his eyes. "My aunt does not have any ties to the mafia."

"Wendy," Kenny appealed as they walked down the stairs into the garage. "This woman flat out says we can't stay with her because of something Butters' dad says, and now she wants to apologize. That's fishy as fuck, right?"

"I don't know," Wendy pursed her lips. "Normally I'd agree with you, but I've met his aunt. She's really nice—even helped get me this job. I don't know… I'd go listen to her."

Kenny deflated and climbed into the back seat of Wendy's '83 Honda Civic.

"Hey, you'd better be fucking your mechanic for keeping this piece of shit up and running," he said as Butters and Wendy slipped in with him.

"Classy," Wendy scowled at him in the rear view before she started the car and puttered out of the garage.

Of course, Wendy on the road was a completely different story. It had always been why Kenny had liked her as much as he did—she drove like a woman on a mission from God himself. Compared to Stan and Kyle (Kyle especially, who drove like he was pushing eighty), she was a fucking speed demon. This, of course, had led to a lot of problems, but luckily she also had the quickest reflexes known to man, which had bailed her out countless times in the past.

Like now, when screeched to a halt after some idiot kid walked off the curb, eyes on his phone and, as Wendy so kindly pointed out, head up his ass. Kenny flew forward, of course having forgotten to buckle up, and smacked his head on the back of Butters' seat.

"Jesus," Butters muttered, though if it was in reference to Kenny or the idiot in the street, Kenny wasn't sure. That feeling was back in his stomach, that unsettling feeling of death gnawing at him like a swarm of termites. He didn't bother to ask Wendy to be careful, mostly because he knew Wendy would keep them safe, but he did sneak a peek to see that Butters was buckled in, just in case.

By the time they got to the beach, it was still pretty cold, pretty overcast, and pretty shitty all around, but Butters insisted they wouldn't be there for too long. This, of course, turned into a shitty two hours on the beach, freezing their asses off and wishing the sun would just fucking come out already.

Or, at least, that was Kenny's concern. Butters had long since abandoned his shoes and socks at Kenny's side and rolled his jeans up to his knees, like he was Huck fucking Finn or something, so that he could go splash in what had to be ice-cold water.

"I love the ocean," had been Butters' excuse. "Just one of those things that reminds you of how big the world is… like the mountains back home, or outer space. Every time things get tough, I look at stuff like that and it reminds me that my problems aren't so bad."

"That's a good way to look at it, I guess," Kenny frowned and hugged his knees to his chest. Luckily, Butters' fleece sweater was about a hundred times warmer than the flimsy piece of shit sweater that Butters was wearing.

"Well, that," Butters said, pausing briefly. "And if all else fails, I just remember that the sun is going to explode one day and annihilate this planet, so why should it bother me if I can't find matching socks, y'know?"

Such a morose observation would have been cause for concern in anyone else, but with the way Butters was splashing in and kicking up the frothy sea beneath his feet Kenny couldn't find it in himself to be too worried about Butters' mental wellbeing. He was more well-adjusted than just about anyone Kenny knew.

His actual wellbeing, however, was another thing entirely. Kenny had died of pneumonia a few times in his life (mostly when he was younger), and it was by no means a fun way to go.

"Aren't you cold?" he called to Butters, who just looked at him like a tracking hound startled out of a moment of deep concentration.

"Poseidon, King of the Sea, doesn't get cold," he said very frankly, and when Kenny gave him a confused look, he continued with, "I am lord of all the sea creatures and you can't tell me otherwise."

It took Kenny a few moments to register exactly what he'd said. Then he laughed, because it was ridiculous. Butters made him want to laugh so much more than anyone else ever had, and that was incredible enough in its own right. No one really made Kenny laugh anymore. Granted, it was a little hard to keep a straight face when Butters turned to the ocean and raised his hands toward the skies in defiance. He was shouting something that sounded way too good to have been off the top of his head—Kenny guessed it was a poem or a song or something, but he didn't ask.

It wasn't another moment before Butters ran back up and fell to his hands and knees in front of Kenny. He grinned as Butters leaned forward and kissed him, and kissed back, because he couldn't imagine a situation in which he wouldn't want to kiss Butters back.

"You're lookin' awful lost in thought over here," Butters hummed when he pulled away. "Anything I can do to help?"

Kenny shook his head and smiled. It was impossible not to smile at Butters; he was one of those people who was just kind of how you'd imagine sunshine would look if it were a human being.

"You ever been in love?"

_Shit_. Kenny hadn't meant to say that. He'd meant to say something like, "nice ass" or "your mom's got huge tits", not ask a question that was doomed to turn into a lengthy conversation that Kenny was not in the mood to have. Butters just sat back on his haunches, regarding Kenny contemplatively as he brushed some of the sand on his knees. Then, as though just realizing the gravity of the question, stopped and looked Kenny in the eye.

"In love-love?" he asked and Kenny nodded, because of course Butters would need clarification on that. Butters just pouted his lips out thoughtfully and fell back into a sitting position, feet grazing the sides of Kenny's ass as he buried them in the sand. "I don't think so. Never really felt like I have been. Seems like something you'd just know, dontcha think?"

Kenny nodded again, taking Butters' hand in his and running the pads of his thumbs along the rough, sinewy knuckles.

"You all right, Ken?" Butters asked through a chuckle.

"Yeah," Kenny nodded just as Butters' phone started buzzing. There was that feeling again—that sickly feeling of anticipation you get when you know something's coming that you can't stop but wish more than anything that you could.

"She's here," Butters smiled and hopped to his feet, pulling Kenny right up along with him. He then braced his hands on Kenny's shoulders and looked at him very firmly. "Now, she just wants to help, all right? You ain't gonna do anybody a lick of good bein' a smartass, all right?"

Kenny pursed his lips, but grudgingly agreed to be on his best behavior when Butters gave him a particularly harsh scowl. It didn't help the sour feeling in his stomach, knowing that Butters was an insanely forgiving human being and would probably kiss and make up with his aunt before she even had a chance to say how sorry she allegedly was. They walked to the parking lot in silence, Butters rather gracelessly hopping back into his shoes and socks and unrolling his pant legs as they did. The feeling in his stomach almost went away when Butters asked if they could smoke a cigarette before they got to the car.

"Nervous?" Kenny asked. Butters shrugged and lit up, taking a deep drag before he handed it to Kenny.

"What gave it away?" he folded his arms. Kenny shrugged back and passed the cigarette. Butters inhaled, cheeks going hollow and shoulders dropping as the nicotine soothed him into calm. It made Kenny's heart feel a little fuzzy when Butters looked at him, made him feel very dizzy when Butters rested his free hand on the nape of Kenny's neck and brought him into a kiss.

"Thanks," he said very softly against Kenny's lips before pulling away entirely and taking another drag off of the cigarette. He handed it back to Kenny and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"For what?" Kenny frowned and took in a lungful of smoke. His chest went tight when Butters' arms slid around his waist and brought him into a hug. Kenny was probably going to have to work on quitting smoking soon, before it became absolutely impossible to breathe altogether. He flicked the half-finished cigarette onto the sand and wrapped his arms around Butters' shoulders and stood there for a few moments.

"We should go," Butters sniffed and let his arms fall back at his sides and continued on toward the parking lot. That old familiar feeling surged back up: something bad was about to happen. He ran to catch up with Butters, who was walking between a few parked cars, and put a hand on his shoulder. Butters turned and gave him a smile before craning his neck and searching through the parking lot.

"Wonder where she is," he muttered to himself and pulled out his phone. "Good thing she learned how to text, y'know?"

"Yeah, God forbid you actually talk to human beings," Kenny snorted as Butters began walking, his fingers flew over the keys on his phone.

Then it was like time stopped. It kind of always did when shit like this happened, when Kenny had a spur of the moment decision to make. Butters was so engrossed in his phone that he hadn't seen the big escalade round the corner like a bat out of hell, and the driver didn't have the time to react before Butters was in line for prime collision.

It wasn't bravery, no matter what anyone said. If you had the power to come back after you died, wouldn't you spend your life making sure everyone else could go on living their lives? Butters would be fine as long as he stayed with Wendy—she wouldn't let anything happen to him.

He didn't bother calling Butters' name or getting his attention. That wasn't what it was about—that's never what it's about. It would take too much time, he wouldn't fall properly, and Kenny would have to watch someone die knowing that he could have saved him.

So he just surged forward and pushed Butters out of the way as hard as he could.


	9. Chapter 9

What ho? A quick update? Say it ain't so! Anyway, I miscalculated, and it turns out that we have one more chapter to go and then (probably) an epilogue. We'll see how things go. I have about a thousand papers to write within the next week and a half. I may die.

I churned this out way more quickly than I'm used to, so sorry if there are errors or if it's not up to par. It needed to be written in the time of NAO.

Thank you for the reviews/feedback, as per. I'm happy that you guys are happy.

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><p>There wasn't really a fantastic way to measure one's time in Hell (which, nine times out of ten, was where Kenny usually ended up these days). Kenny thought it was a little odd, ending up there after saving someone. Usually saving someone at least got him into Heaven for a little while before he was sent back. Then again, there wasn't any way to measure time in Heaven either. Once you were in a place where 'eternity' was the long-term goal, everything just kind of seemed to run together.<p>

For example, Kenny had been at Satan's place when he'd started feeling that little pull in his gut. Strictly speaking, Satan wasn't supposed to show favoritism toward any of the damned, but Kenny had been helping him out of binds for years now. Whether it was another tumultuous break-up, or advice on how to handle Damian, or even how to fix his dish washer, Kenny was usually Satan's go-to guy. By now they were regular pals, which explained why Kenny had ended up in his house for piss-water tea and shitty-ass granola cookies.

Satan's new boyfriend was some peyote-smoking, ass-backwards hippie from Northern California who'd sooner eat the bark off of trees than cut one down. Kenny had already expressed his disapproval of the man and the tea, both of which probably tasted as much like goat piss as the other, when, before he could even take another sip of the offensive liquid, he felt that all-too familiar yank back into the realm of the living.

He didn't remember the first part—he never had—and he was insanely grateful for that. No one needed to remember the undoubtedly unpleasant experience of being pushed out of his mother's womb. All he ever remembered was waking up in his bed, in a threadbare old sweatshirt that, after a while, hadn't even been his. As he got older, and his body became less malleable, the regenerations became more and more painful. Going from infant-sized to nearly full-grown in a night wasn't natural, and after a while it started to surprise him that he was even able to get up and walk so soon after.

Those mornings were often full of vicodin and mouthfuls of whiskey.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Butters saying something about "That's what got Judy", and in the midst of trying to figure out just _how_ he knew that reference or why he heard that particular voice saying it, he felt his heart drop right out of his chest and through the mattress.

Butters.

_Fuck,_ he'd left Butters.

Kenny sat up, a little too fast he gathered as he felt his head pound and every muscle in his body scream in protest. He stuck his hand under the mattress and pulled out the little plastic baggie still reasonably full of pills. He took two and swallowed them dry before he fell back against the mattress and let them work their magic. He figured he should probably put pants on at some point, but with the amount he'd been in and out of them for the last few days, he didn't know why he even bothered putting them on at all. Apparently the world had qualms about seeing dick, like they were going to come to life and break the world of its self-perceived innocence.

Or some shit. He'd talk to Wendy about it later.

Kenny opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Unless Wendy's living room also had a water stain in the unmistakable shape of two rabbits fucking, he was no longer in California, but in fact back in the drafty shithole that was his childhood room.

He knew that. He fucking _knew _that, so why did it feel like he hadn't?

Kenny sat up again, a little less painfully this time, and rubbed at his eyes. He wasn't as pissed that he was back in South Park so much as he was upset that Butters wasn't waking up next to him, asking him what was wrong, if he'd had a nightmare, or if he'd like help calming down.

As a general rule, Kenny didn't cry. But he may have done a little when he realized that.

Without much more thought, he slid off of his bed, pulled on whatever clothing he'd left for thrift store sales when he'd up and gone, and peeked out the window. He'd been in California for less than a day and he still let out a little huff of surprise when he saw snow shining bright under the streetlamps. He grabbed an old parka from the back of his closet, one that fit him a little too snug for his liking, and attempted to sneak down the stairs and out of the house.

No such fucking luck, of course.

Karen was camped out on the couch with, of all people, Kevin, watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on their pitiful excuse for a TV. If Kenny tried really hard, he could manage to get out through the back without too much trouble and make a break for the Broflovski's house. Even if they couldn't help him get back to Butters, they'd at least understand, so he padded away as lightly as he possibly could with his feet tucked away in a pair of Kevin's old steel-toed boots.

It didn't end well. Mostly because he tripped over a duffel bag that had most-certainly not been there all the times Kenny had attempted to do this before. Fuck, that had hurt.

"Kenny?" came Karen's soft, hopeful voice. He knew what was next, and it was always the worst so soon after coming back: Karen's hugs. She was thin and wiry, like Kenny and Carol, but she hugged like she had the arms of a three-hundred-pound Irish dock worker. Not that he didn't appreciate it, mind—he'd always kind of suspected that Karen had a vague intuition about his deaths—but even with the drugs it was kind of a lot of pain to take, especially from a fifteen-year-old girl.

"I knew you'd come back!" she exclaimed. Kenny felt a horrible guilt settle in his chest as he moved to hug her back. He hadn't intended on returning, and in fact would have signed up for the Witness Protection Program if anyone had ever told him that there may have been a chance of this happening, and that kind of made him feel like the biggest sack of shit in the world because _fucking Kevin_ was here for shit's sake.

"Yeah, I did," he decided to reply, because it was better than the truth and Karen always deserved better than the truth. Kevin must've picked up on the lie, though, because he gave Kenny a look that would have been calculating if Kenny believed that he had had the capacity. Instead, he hauled Karen to her feet and then held out a hand for Kenny, who made an active point not to take it and in fact helped himself up, thank you.

"Mom and dad here?" he asked, straightening out his pants and pulling his hood back up over his head. Karen shook her head, moving in for another hug. Kenny wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. He gave Kevin a look that they'd been giving each other for eighteen years, that 'where are mom and dad' look, and Kevin shrugged.

"The shelter," he said and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Picking up the gifts and shit for tomorrow."

Kenny frowned and almost asked for clarification, but with the cartoon kids singing on TV and their shitty, 'assembly required' plastic Christmas tree, he should have known.

"It's Christmas Eve," he said, almost unwilling to believe it. He'd been in Hell for almost two goddamned weeks and all he'd gotten out of it had been a sip of ass tea and a long-winded recounting of Satan's new whirlwind romance?

Actually, that sounded about right.

"'scuse me," he said and kissed Karen on the top of the head. "I'm gonna grab some water. Anyone want anything?"

He didn't wait for an answer, just ran into the kitchen as fast as he could with every intention of splashing his face with cold water so he could just _wake the fuck up_ and get up to speed with life.

Naturally, when he went to switch on the faucet he got jack shit. It was a wonder the electricity was even on, then, if this was the case. Goddamn, he forgot how much he hated this fucking house. If he left again, he decreed his first order of business would be to take Karen with him this time, because no kid should have to live like this. He was about a thousand percent sure he could do a better job of looking out for her than their parents were doing.

"Hey, corn-holer."

Kenny turned and looked at Kevin, leaning against the doorway like he fucking owned it, and scowled. Kevin was built like their dad, in both mind and body. Sure, Kevin had a bit of a soft spot when it came to Kenny and Karen (something Stuart McCormick sure as shit didn't have), and he spent a good portion of their younger, younger years making sure Kenny had a smile on his face, but some wires had gotten crossed when they were growing up and something wasn't all right in his brain.

Because even though Kevin was kind of smart schoolwise (when he let himself be), he was those kids who was smart enough to pick up on social cues and thick enough not to question which ones he adopted for himself. After growing up so close to their dad, practically being their dad's fucking golden child, he kind of gave up on trying to be the brother he'd originally set out to be. Every punch, every jibe, every moment of torment was categorized as 'done for Kenny's own good'. It was supposed to make him tougher, supposed to make him a man or some shit. There was a time when Kenny would have explained it away, that he would have rationalized it as just Kevin's way of showing that he loved him. Kenny wasn't stupid enough to believe that anymore—Kevin was an asshole and there wasn't any getting around it.

Then, of course, there was the time in the eighth grade that Kevin had clocked Bill Allen so hard that he'd dislocated his jaw after he'd called Kenny a fag. Kenny didn't really have the heart to point out that Bill called just about everything 'gay', and just took it for what it was: the nicest thing Kevin had ever done for him.

But then he'd left the second Kenny had come out to him.

Kenny cracked one of his knuckles and looked away from Kevin's burly shadow.

"Do me a favor and fuck the fuck off, Kev," Kenny grumbled and made his way over to the door. "Tell Karen I'm going out."

"Coming back?" Kevin had the audacity to ask. Kenny may have laughed a little too hard at that and rolled his eyes.

"Why the fuck do you care?" he spat. "You haven't been here in years, shithead."

Kevin just shrugged and folded his arms. There was something different about him, kind of the way he'd been when they were kids and on their own, when they'd venture off away from the house, away from their dad. With Stuart around Kevin only got worse; when they were alone, he sort of became Kevin again. Maybe being away from the house for so long had softened him up a bit.

"Karen called me, cock-sucker," he began. "Said you left. Mom and dad were giving her shit so I came out."

"Yeah, you came back just for her," Kenny scoffed and braced himself against the counter. "I'm not retarded, okay? Just tell me why you're here and I promise I won't tell anyone."

Kevin raised his eyebrows, but didn't budge much more than that.

"I did," he said. If Kenny could have ripped the countertop off of the cabinets and thrown it at Kevin's head, he would have.

"So what," he laughed, running his hands over his face instead. "You'll come back for her, but the second I call you and tell you that mom and dad are worse than ever, you tell me to suck it up and get over it. Nice."

"Okay," Kevin conceded, throwing his hands up in defeat, "that sucked. I don't have an excuse."

"I figured," Kenny shot back. Kevin rolled his eyes.

"Come on, what the fuck was I s'posed to do?" he asked. "You told me you were a fag."

"I told you I liked guys _and_ girls," Kenny clarified. "Though why I expected you to be able to distinguish one from the other, I'll never know."

"Yeah, well," Kevin started, "you shouldn't have said anything at all."

"I didn't mean to," Kenny folded his arms, all defenses up now. "But now you have to go through the rest of your life knowing that your brother likes sucking cock, right? Poor you."

The apparent disgust on Kevin's face was a little too much for Kenny to handle. Of course, instead of leaving the house and going for a walk like a rational human being, Kenny had to take matters into his own hands and make a scene. He was half-a-queer—he was entitled to theatrics every once in a while, right?

"What's wrong, Kev?" Kenny asked, tilting his head coyly as he approached his brother slowly. "Can't stand the thought of your little brother getting down on his knees and begging some guy to shove his dick down his throat? Is the thought of some guy fucking me within an inch of my life too much for you to handle?"

Kevin shoved him back when he got too close, almost like pushing people into tables was an involuntary reaction to this situation. Kenny's temper flared when he looked back at Kevin and saw his face, stoic and unfeeling as he watched Kenny rub at a tender part of his back that had hit the table. He lunged forward with every intention of tackling Kevin to the ground, only to be met by Kevin's fist to his gut. _Oh, fuck_.

"Fucker!" Kenny coughed and leaned against the opposite side of the doorway.

"That's what you get," Kevin shrugged. Kenny supposed you didn't get too far in the illegal drug game without knowing how to beat the shit out of someone with minimal blows, but still.

"That's how Houdini died, dickhead!" he groaned and doubled over, clutching his stomach as he took a few deep breaths. When a punch to the stomach made your spine hurt, you knew you were in trouble.

"You'll be fine," Kevin said just as Karen appeared in the doorway. Her eyes went big as she looked from Kevin to Kenny and back again.

"Kevin, what the hell?" she shoved at his meaty shoulder.

"He was gonna hit me," Kevin shrugged. "Go back to the couch and finish the movie."

"Fuck you, don't tell me what to do!" Karen snapped, voice not so soft and hopeful anymore, and helped Kenny stand back upright. In fact, she sounded kind of like their mom, which made Kenny's stomach give an unpleasant churn.

At the same time, Kenny was pretty sure he'd have actually gotten sick if Karen had listened to Kevin and walked back to the couch with her tail in between her legs. He liked to think he'd taught his baby sister how to stand up for herself, but when you lived in this house it was kind of a necessity. As it stood, it looked a little like Karen might smack either one of them in the face if they dared say the wrong thing.

Well, maybe Kevin. She'd never hit Kenny.

"He was gonna leave again," Kevin said, looking at Kenny instead of Karen. "Without even saying goodbye to you. Again."

"You fucking asshole," Kenny made to tackle him again, but Karen held him back.

"Stop fighting!" she shouted, and maybe shoved Kevin back with her other arm when he tried to taunt Kenny into pushing her aside and coming at him. She looked at Kenny and huffed.

"You need to calm down," she said, then shifted her gaze to Kevin. "And you stop starting shit. Goddamn, I _cannot_ be the most mature person in this family. I just can't be."

Kenny wilted at that and straightened up, stomach still sore and temples still pulsing with rage. Kevin's face remained stony as he just watched Karen pull over a rickety chair for Kenny, watched her smooth his hair and get him a can of store-brand cola out of the fridge.

"You know he's a fag?" he asked, and the only reason Kenny hadn't attacked the fuck out of him _now _ had been because Karen's hands were firm on his shoulders, holding him to the chair.

"Will you grow the fuck up?" Karen rolled her eyes, though to whom she was speaking remained a mystery.

"He is!" Kevin exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at Kenny. Jesus, it was the most animated he'd been all evening. "He told me so himself."

"Fuck you," Kenny snapped. "Because even if that _was_ what I'd told you, why the fuck is it your business to tell Karen, you piece of shit?"

"That you sleep with guys?" Karen asked, looking from Kevin to Kenny and back again. They were locked in a death stare—first one to look away lost (although what, Kenny didn't know). Meanwhile, Karen just started laughing. Like, really laughing… like she and Kenny were huddled under a blanket in the living room watching old Saturday Night Live reruns or something.

"That's what this is about?" she asked, verging on hysteria now as she looked at Kevin. "You—you can't be around him for two seconds because he likes guys? Who the fuck cares?"

"I don't!" Kevin exclaimed, breaking eye contact with Kenny and going a little red in the face. "Not anymore. And as long as he doesn't talk about it or make eyes at me or anything."

Karen kept laughing, holding her side now, as Kenny broke eye contact with Kevin and made his way for the back door.

"I'm going out," he said. "Don't tell mom and dad I'm here."

And with that he left, trudging through the snow and off toward the Broflovski house. Goddamn, Kevin always brought out the worst in him. It was a good thing Karen had been there, otherwise it was likely Kevin would've beaten him beyond recognition, for no good reason other than the fact that Kenny would have attacked him first, and he would have felt that he needed to teach Kenny a lesson.

Usually, when that happened, the lesson more often than not turned out to be "don't fuck with Kevin".

Mostly, Kevin confused the ever-loving shit out of Kenny. Sometimes he did the right thing, other times he was just a bleeding asshole; he could be kind, but most of the time he was just a violent shit. A good guy wouldn't hit his own brother, even his own sister once or twice, just because he could, but a bad guy wouldn't come back to take the heat off of his little sister, or punch someone in the face for calling his little brother names… names that he himself couldn't stop using.

Kenny stopped outside of the Broflovski house and flopped face-first into the snow. If he was lucky, he'd die of hypothermia before anyone found him. Soon he'd be back in Hell, lounging on one of Satan's many deck chairs with a beer, with a chesty lady or a hot cabana boy to keep him company. Or maybe he'd go to Heaven. That'd be kind of nice for a change. There was a hallway in Heaven he'd found once, stretching on into the infinite, full of doors. Even if you were there for all eternity, you'd never get through exploring every door. Inside each was a paradise, tailored to each and every human being who'd ever lived. Some rooms were doorways to tropical island getaways, others to cozy-looking dens with nothing but reruns of the Love Boat. Wherever he ended up, be it Heaven or Hell, anywhere was better than here. Anything was better than being back in this fucking town with its fucking people.

He rolled over and clutched at his stomach. It still kind of hurt from Kevin's fist, but it had since morphed into something else. Kenny wasn't entirely sure of what, but he knew he didn't like it. If Butters was here, everything would be okay. He'd just sit there and smooth out Kenny's hair, offering little comforts as Kenny went through exactly what Kevin said and, god forbid, how it made him feel. Then Butters would probably reiterate his feelings in a more eloquent way than Kenny, who'd undoubtedly just say that it made him feel like shit.

Goddamn it, Kenny had never felt like such spectacular shit before in his life.

"Kenny?"

Kenny opened his eyes and saw Kyle standing over him, looking at him like he'd just fallen from space. Kenny supposed that, to him, he had. He didn't bother sitting up, just looked at Kyle with a blank sort of look that he hoped conveyed whatever the fuck this was. Kyle didn't quite seem to get it, but extended a hand to help him stand anyway. Kenny regarded it without much thought for a few moments before he took it.

Son of a bitch, now he was wet and cold _and_ he felt like he'd just been hit by a car.

He didn't even bother to give a sardonic laugh at the cruel irony as Kyle looked over the rims of his glasses, searching for something Kenny was desperately trying to give.

"You want some dry clothes?"

Kenny just nodded and went to rest his forehead on his shoulder. In a rare act of physical affection, Kyle didn't hesitate to give Kenny a hug. Not like Butters' hugs, all lingering and full of a certain something Kenny couldn't identify, but one of those back-clapping, man hugs that must have come from years of trying to pretend that he didn't want to hold Stan close to him.

"My mom made matzo ball soup," Kyle said, like nothing had happened, like Kenny hadn't just up and left everyone and everything in this town for dead.

Like he hadn't bailed like Kevin had.

"That sounds like the best thing ever," Kenny sniffled and pulled out of Kyle's space. They walked up to the house in silence, boots crunching in the snow as they approached the brightly-lit house. Hanukkah had been weeks ago by now, but Sheila wasn't one to let Christmas pass without letting everyone know just where she stood on issues of holy days.

Kenny thought it was funny; Kyle and Ike just kind of wanted to kill themselves every year. Kyle brought Kenny up into his room and rummaged through his dresser for clean clothes. Kyle wasn't nearly as thin as Kenny anymore, but he'd been diabetic since they were kids and had always had trouble putting on weight. Out of anyone who'd loaned him clothes in South Park over the years, Kyle's had always fit best.

After a fresh set of sweats and a baggy shirt, a blanket, and a hot bowl of soup, Kenny followed Kyle down into the basement and settled into the old familiar couch with the bowl of soup cradled in his lap. Kyle was scanning over his collection of DVDs, because that's what Kyle did. He didn't bother trying to talk to you, like Stan or Butters did. Kyle's main concern was getting you back to neutral, and, who knows, maybe even making you smile in the process.

"I have Raiders and Temple of Doom, but Ike took Last Crusade over to his friend's house," Kyle said.

"Ike has friends?" Kenny asked through a mouthful of soup. Kyle laughed.

"Yeah," he said. "The fucker managed to make friends with the one Muslim kid in his class. They're having a heathen anti-Christmas protest or some shit. I can't remember."

"Nice," Kenny chuckled and poked at the massive matzo in his bowl. "Where's Stan?"

"Christmas Eve dinner with his parents," Kyle said wearily, like he was already tired of talking about it. "His dad's there with his new girlfriend… suffice to say, he's not happy."

"Why aren't you there sharing the burden or whatever it is you guys do?" Kenny asked.

"Because," Kyle sighed. "We're not like that. And even if we were, it's not like we're dating or anything. We do our own holiday shit, and when it's all over we fuck each other until we can't remember how shitty this fucking season is. Standard shit, you know?"

Kenny took note of just how freshly showered and shaved Kyle looked; considering his normally sloppy 'fuck you, I'm a math student' look, Kenny should have figured.

"Dude, I won't stay long," Kenny shook his head and went to work on his soup a little faster. Kyle just shook his head and waved off the notion with a quick flick of his hand.

"Please, it's only seven," he said. "Between his dad's new girlfriend and Shelly's fiancé, Stan's gonna have a fuck of a time getting out of there before midnight. He likes to make sure his mom's okay after everyone leaves, you know?"

Kenny nodded, even though he didn't really know. His mom definitely favored him, but he'd never been close to his mom quite like Stan was with Sharon. Especially after the divorce, Stan had taken her side almost instantly. Shelly had remained impartial, Kenny remembered, mostly preferring to spend time with her boyfriend at the time than with either of her parents. Needless to say, it had formed quite a merry rift between all of them.

"Do they know you guys are fucking?" Kenny asked, sipping at his soup thoughtfully.

"No," Kyle shook his head. "No one needs to know. We're both pretty much so sick of everyone's shit that we don't care what they think anymore. Friends, more than friends, husbands… I could give a shit. It's none of their business."

"Stan feels that way too?" Kenny was going to have a hard time believing that. When he'd been with Wendy, he'd been practically codependent.

"Look," Kyle paused and hung his head. "If Stan wanted me to tell everyone, I would. I'd have shouted it over the P.A. system if he'd asked. Stan's not like that, though, and that's kind of why I love him. We know what we have, take it for what it is, and we don't try to make it into anything more, you know? It's good."

Goddamn, how was Kyle so fucking zen about these things? He'd gone through most of high school girlfriendless, hadn't had sex with anyone until he and Stan had started fucking around, and even then he'd been so cool about the whole thing. Maybe that was how he'd calmed Stan down back then, back when he'd been too worked up and depressed even to get out of his bed and shave.

"You fucked the co-de right out of him, didn't you?" Kenny smiled, in response to which Kyle smiled back and gave a wink. Kenny laughed so hard he almost spilled his soup.

"It's been a _long_ and _grueling_ process," Kyle over enunciated through a facetious smile, "but it's worth the effort for someone I care about."

Kenny laughed and took a generous gulp of soup. Okay, he missed Butters, but he'd definitely missed Kyle. There was something to be said for how okay Kyle could make him feel when they were like this. Kyle seemed to be having similar thoughts, because he just smiled and looked down at the floor.

"It's good to hear you laugh, dude," he said. "It's… I don't know. It's just good to see you happy again."

"I think I'm in love with Butters."

Kenny didn't even realize he'd said it until Kyle dropped the DVDs he'd been holding and turned a scrutinizing gaze on Kenny.

"Oh really now?" he asked, sarcasm practically oozing over his words. Kenny ran his hands over his face and sighed as Kyle moved to sit beside him on the couch.

"I didn't mean that," Kenny attempted to back pedal.

"Bullshit," Kyle frowned. "You don't say things you don't mean. Is that why you've been so fucking weird?"

Kenny pursed his lips like he was unsure of how to proceed and set his soup on the ground beside him. He knew what he wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure of how to ask without sounding like a complete lunatic. Then again, he'd been telling everyone he could die and come back to life for years, so lunacy wasn't really a new label for him.

"Did I run away?" he asked finally. Kyle's entire face contorted into a look of sheer confusion.

"Yeah, dude," he said. "Like, weeks ago. I tried calling you, but you didn't answer. Then I called Butters and he said you disappeared. Figured you were on your way back when you found out Kevin was here. You seen him yet?"

"Huh?" Kenny asked when he realized Kyle was expecting an answer. Butters thought he left him. Like, _left him_ left him.

"Have you seen Kevin yet?" Kyle reiterated.

"Oh, yeah," Kenny nodded. "Fucking tool, as usual. Butters thinks I disappeared?"

"Well, you did, didn't you?" Kyle posed back, his eyebrows knitted together. He sighed and cast his gaze down at his hands. "Dude, he's been looking for you for weeks."

"What do you mean?" Kenny frowned. He forgot what being gone for so long could do to a guy.

"Oh, come on," Kyle cocked his head. "You know about this."

"Refresh me," Kenny deadpanned. Sometimes he swore Kyle knew that he could die and come back and just did shit like this to be an asshole. Kenny wouldn't put it past him.

"His dad went and found him," Kyle said covertly, like Butters was standing right behind them. Kyle, as much as he hated to admit it, was just as much of a fucking yenta as his mother. He kind of got off on gossip in a really strange way that no one had really expected. "Brought him back about a week ago. He came looking for you but you were fuck-all knows where."

Hold on.

Slam on the motherfucking brakes.

"Butters is here," Kenny said, just for clarification.

"As far as I know," Kyle shrugged. "Hey, where the fuck are you going?" he shouted as Kenny threw off his blanket and ran up the stairs. Kyle followed him promptly, standing by kind of impotently as Kenny pulled on Kevin's boots and fell over several times in the process.

"Dude, seriously," Kyle said.

"I have to go talk to him," Kenny muttered, fully committed to getting on his shoes and getting the fuck out of there. Butters was _here_, back in South Park with Kenny. Suddenly things didn't seem as bleak as they did before, like the dark clouds were parting and letting in a single ray of sunshine.

Butters. He couldn't stop thinking about him, and it was making him smile like a fucking idiot. And Butters would be so happy to see him. Fuck, the poor guy had probably been having anxiety attacks up the ass wondering where Kenny had gone.

"Do you want a ride?" Kyle asked, pulling Kenny out of his thoughts. "It'll be quicker than you running all the way across town."

"Only if you're okay with the idea of me sucking face with Butters," Kenny replied and hopped to his feet. Kyle just shrugged and grabbed his car keys off of the hook by the door.

"Believe it or not, I've seen worse."


	10. Chapter 10

Okay folks, here it is: **the last chapter_. _**I had to get it out now because I'm in the throes of finals week and I have two papers to write and I wouldn't have been able to focus if I hadn't left this somewhat finished. I may write an **epilogue_, _**I may not. Depends on how cynical I am by the time I'm done writing essays.

A big thank you to **everyone who's stuck around and read**, as per. I **enjoy the hell out of feedback**, even if it's just a quick line to tell me that you're enjoying the story. If you're not, then you've probably already fucked off and started reading something else by now.

Also, **long chapter is looooong.**

* * *

><p>"Butters, Charlie Brown is on!"<p>

There was a time when Butters would have dropped whatever he was doing and immediately run down the stairs at that. It was his favorite Christmas special (if one could even have a favorite in the first place), and if he'd missed it even a year ago he would have found himself a whole heap of disappointed. He'd always felt a sort of connection to Charlie Brown, like they were kindred spirits or something. Always with the bad luck and the insecurities, always taken advantage of… the similarities were actually kind of depressing, actually.

As it stood, Butters was now perfectly content with laying face down on his bed, hoping that this pain in his chest was indicative of a looming heart attack because, seriously, absolutely anything would be better than being back here. In South Park, in his house, in his room, just… _here_.

"Butters?" came a knock on the door. It was his mom, Butters knew, all decked out in her emerald green dress and bright red cardigan. She'd been wearing it all day, like she did every year on Christmas Eve, and once upon a time Butters would've brought his kitschy old reindeer sweater out of mothballs and joined her in the revelry.

Then again, once upon a time his parents hadn't all but kidnapped him and brought him home against his will.

"Sweetheart, I know this isn't ideal," his mother began as she sat beside him on the bed and placed a hand on his back. "But you don't know what you were getting yourself into. There's all sorts of creepy crawlies out there… who knows what could've happened if you were just walking down the street at the wrong time. I couldn't bear the thought of losing you again. Neither of us could."

Butters shifted his face out of the bosom of his pillow and looked over at her contemplatively. He'd been forced into faking his death only once—the whole Marjorine incident that, to this day, he still didn't like talking about—but that had been enough for his parents. After they'd managed to get it through their heads that Butters was, in fact, _not_ demon spawn, they'd kept an extra-close eye on him. Then, of course, there had been the time his mom had tried to drown him and had had to live with the thought that she'd killed him. Butters supposed the first was probably harder on her, but he couldn't be sure. He was pretty sure that, if and when he had kids, he'd never be able to live with the thought that one had died, at his hands or anyone else's. He couldn't imagine what his parents must've felt either time, although one situation gained a little more sympathy from Butters than the other, if he was being honest.

Long story short, he knew he should've pretended to off himself before he left. Then at least he could've guaranteed that he never had to come back to South Park, and if he'd ever wanted he could've at least come back on his own terms.

Of course, then he would've been a registered dead man, literally, and that was no good.

"I made gingerbread," his mother said softly, pulling him out of his thoughts (though it was more the mention of gingerbread than her). "Would you like me to bring you some with some apple cinnamon tea?"

Butters grumbled and buried his face back in the pillow. She'd have brought him some regardless of his response anyway—he didn't much feel like wasting words on her right now. It was just a good thing that his dad hadn't decided to tag along on this little visit to his room, because Butters wasn't sure he'd have been able to hold in his anger if he'd shown his face. He'd been actively avoiding the man for the last week now, which was a much easier task when he had work and Butters was free to roam about the house at his own leisure. Unfortunately, he'd had the day off today, which, aside from a quick jaunt to the store around noon, had pretty much confined Butters to his room.

It wasn't so bad when his room smelled like Christmas, of course, all spicy and warm when his mother reentered with her tidings of apology and pity. Butters didn't quite want to sit up though, not even for his favorite tea and favorite cookies. They'd just taste like crap right now, because everything was crap right now and Butters didn't even know why. It was the kind of thing that made you just want to plop down in a dark corner and cry until it all blew over, which was odd. Normally his parents just made him mad—they never made him so mad that he couldn't breathe.

They hadn't even made him cry good and proper since he was twelve, and yet there he was, all breathless and crying.

"Sweetheart, we're going to stop by the Testaburgers' Christmas party," his mom said softly, brushing at a few strands of his hair. "I'm sure Wendy would love to see you… and Bebe too. They've been calling for you all week, honey."

"I'll stay here," Butters replied softly. Somehow he got the feeling that they weren't the people he needed to talk to right now.

His mom patted him on the back and kissed him on the top of the head.

"I put some ham in the fridge for you," she said. "Please eat."

Butters nodded but didn't reply as she shut his door. He didn't want to talk anymore. He wasn't even sure he could think anything anymore, so he just listened to his parents shuffle around downstairs and ultimately leave the house about ten minutes later.

He sat up and rubbed at his good eye. The house was completely silent for a change, and it was actually really disconcerting. Usually the dishwasher or the dryer were running when he was alone, and when he wasn't alone either his mom was humming as she puttered around and cleaned the house or his dad was talking animatedly along with Bill O'Reilly or something.

Nothing now, though; Butters was completely alone.

"God fucking damn it!" he shouted and threw his pillow across the room and buried his face in his hands. This wouldn't have been so damn horrible if he just knew what the hell was making him feel this way. He had been crying and moping around for so long that he literally could _not _remember what had started the whole thing. Maybe he _should_ _have_ gone to the party with his parents. At least if he'd gone to hang out with the girls he might have been able to forget about how shitty he was feeling.

He rolled off of the bed and grabbed the mug of tea off of his dresser. It tasted good, he knew it did, but even with a cookie it wasn't satisfying. Butters paced around his room for a good long while, sipping and nibbling as he ran through a few ballet positions in his steps. Then he found his feet scuffing at the carpet in a familiar way, tapping through a few long gone by routines, and came to the conclusion that he never should've stopped dancing. Even though he felt like someone had his chest in a vise, even if it felt like he'd never be quite all right again, somehow dancing to a tune in his head made it all feel a little okay. Granted, he couldn't move too much in his room without knocking anything over anyway, but it was still nice. He grabbed the empty plate and mug and ran down stairs to deposit them in the dishwasher. Then he figured that if his mom left him food, he may as well just open up the fridge and get it over with. He grabbed the plate of ham, saran-wrapped with a post-it adhered to it.

A smiley face.

"Jesus, she's so fucking weird," Butters muttered to himself and grabbed all the accoutrements for a sandwich.

It was times like this, eating a ham sandwich all alone in his kitchen, when Butters wished he'd had a brother or sister. He always liked to think that he would've been a good big brother, someone his little sibling could come to in times of distress and in turn Butters could have another someone in this house to help take the heat off of him when he did something bad. (or when his parents were being just plain freaky). Sometimes he liked to imagine what he or she'd be like, if he'd be close enough to him in age to the point where they could've been pals, or if she'd be one of those happy accidents who was years younger than him, that Butters would've spent most of his time babysitting, braiding her hair, or painting her nails.

Then he remembered what Kenny said about his brother and sister and kind of shied away from the thought.

Kenny. When had Kenny said that? He knew he'd said it, he could recall his face doing it, lips forming perfectly around the words, but he couldn't quite place the setting. He wanted to say they were eating, but when had he and Kenny ever gone out to eat? His memory was kind of fuzzy from the last few weeks and all, though he was starting to think that had to do with the fact that he wasn't eating or sleeping too much, but everything before that was still pretty clear. Then again, he had basically condemned himself to solitary confinement; he was just going a little crazy was all.

Nothing new.

Fuck, he hated being back in this town. He hated feeling this alone.

Butters went to wash his plate in the sink and start the dishwasher, because if he was going to be here alone he was going to have a little background noise, damn it. Though, he did suppose that that was what the TV was for. He shuffled out to the living room and flopped down on the couch, grabbed the remote and clicked the TV on like it was the biggest chore he'd had to do all day.

The Rudolph special was on now. Butters had always liked this one too, but mostly because he always thought he'd like to live on the island of misfit toys. They didn't seem like the kind who'd judge him, mostly because he was like them and he always had been. A train with square wheels, that's what he was. For the most part he looked all right, but there was just that one part of him that made him different… useless, even.

Butters jumped up and yelp when he heard a knock on the door.

Who the _fuck_ was knocking so loud on Christmas Eve? Butters didn't care if he was an adult now, didn't care how old he got—he could be forty-four and he'd still duck behind the couch and hide when someone knocked on his door like that. He kept quiet, hoping that whoever was there would assume that no one was home and just go away.

The knock sounded again, more abrasive this time with a resounding "Butters!" to accompany it.

"Come on, Butters, I heard you scream."

That voice. Something in Butters' mind couldn't quite place it, but it drove his hand to the doorknob like an involuntary reaction. Like his body knew something that his brain didn't and assured him that whatever was on the other side was a good thing, worthy of happiness and celebration. He wrenched the door open and felt his entire body come to a grinding halt.

Kenny McCormick.

"Oh, hell no," he scowled and attempted to slam the door in Kenny's face. Of anyone, Butters was ninety-nine percent sure he didn't want to see him either.

"Butters, please—" Kenny said as he threw himself against the door.

"No!" Butters grunted as he tried with all his might to shut the door. "I'm mad at you, McCormick!"

And he was. Kenny had disappeared as soon as they'd gotten to L.A.

_That's right_.

"Butters, come on!" Kenny pleaded as Butters got the door to shut. "I just wanna talk to you."

"Why?" Butters shot back. "Gonna come in and finally tell me why you left me?"

Everything was coming back to him—the bus ride and the hotel, the conversations and the stupid jokes, Wendy, the dead woman, the… _fuck_. The sex. Butters slumped against the door and felt the air rushing in and out of his lungs in short, uneven spurts. He couldn't—he couldn't breathe right. Panic shot through his chest and out to the tips of his fingers, moving through his veins like icy shards at a million miles a minute. Kenny wasn't at his door, _couldn't_ be at his door. It was impossible.

"Butters," Kenny called through the door. "Dude, just breathe, okay? You're fine."

All Butters really wanted to do was tell Kenny to go fuck himself, but he was too far in now. All he could do was slide to the floor and whine like an injured dog.

"Butters," Kenny said again, calmer this time. "Butters, just listen to me, okay? You're fine, baby. You're… you're all right."

Butters felt his chest tighten at that because _goddamn it_ why was Kenny at his door saying sweet stuff like that? Normally Butters was opposed to terms of endearment as a general rule, but there was something in the way that word sounded on Kenny's tongue. It wasn't half-assed, it wasn't condescending, and if definitely wasn't because he couldn't remember Butters' name—it was just because. Just because he cared. He cared and he meant it.

"Please," Kenny begged once more. "Butters, I just want to talk to you."

"You left me," Butters croaked, voice thin and broken sounding because, fuck it all, now he was crying. Wasn't that just aces.

"I can explain," Kenny said, promised. "If you open the door and let me in, I'll explain, okay? Please, I'm cold."

"You didn't bring a sweatshirt?" Butters asked, caught off-guard.

"No," Kenny replied back. "You still have mine."

Butters looked down and saw that, indeed, he was wearing that said same garishly orange hoodie.

To say he was conflicted would have been an understatement. Wendy and Bebe both would've told him to forget it, to tell Kenny to fuck off and be done with it after what he'd done to Butters; hell, Kenny probably would've told Butters the same thing if it had been anyone else. But Butters…

But Butters really wanted to open the door, to listen to everything Kenny had to say and kiss him all over his face right out there on the front step until neither of them could feel their lips anymore. He wanted to kiss Kenny in front of anyone who might be watching, in front of the whole goddamned world if he could, because the world may as well know at this point. With any luck his parents would catch wind of it and kick him out once they realized he was still a pillow-biting, shirt-lifting queer.

Butters, however, being the sensible and pragmatic human being that he was, opted for a happy medium, which started with him opening the door.

He gulped when he saw Kenny sitting on the other side, exactly as Butters had been moments before. They were already too close, so close that Butters could feel the heat radiating off of him. Kenny was the first one to stand and Butters quickly followed. He really wanted to throw his arms around Kenny more than just about anything right now, but instead took the sweatshirt off of his shoulders handed it back to its original owner.

"Is that Kyle out there?" Butters asked, noticing his ever-practical Volvo glinting in the driveway. Kenny nodded and turned to wave… a signal, as it so happened, for Kyle got back into his car and drove off without a moment's hesitation.

"That was bold," Butters said as they moved inside. He shut the door behind them and locked it. "What if I don't forgive you?"

And to both Kenny's and Butters' surprise, there was no hint of mirth behind the words. He turned to look at Kenny, who was zipping up the sweater and shoving his hands in his pockets, and sighed. He was just so fucking attractive it hurt sometimes—he was still the only person Butters knew who could pull off orange and still look as good as he did.

Kenny sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, and then looked up at Butters with that stupid charming smile on his face. Butters wasn't going to last very long if he kept looking at him like that.

"Hey," he said and Butters may have had to fight a smile at that.

"Hi," Butters looked at his feet and scuffed his socks on the carpet. Part of him couldn't believe his mother had never ripped up the ugly burnt orange atrocity.

"You really mad at me?" Kenny asked and Butters shrugged.

"Don't rightly know," he said. "I got a reason to be, don't I."

"Yeah."

"Damn straight, I do!" Butters shot back. "That wasn't a question. I know I got a reason, fucker."

He recoiled instantly and slumped just a little bit when he saw Kenny's eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. _Fuck_.

"Sorry," he said softly. Kenny just shook his head and leaned against the staircase. He didn't look nearly as grungy as he had a few weeks ago. Then again, Butters guessed he didn't either, since he now had full access to a shower and soap. Kenny always looked scrappy, though. He looked different… newer, maybe? People couldn't look new. That was stupid.

"I fucked up," he heard Kenny say. "You wouldn't even be here if I hadn't… if I hadn't left you there. I wouldn't have let your dad bring you back here."

Butters looked back at the floor and folded his arms.

"Been spendin' time at the rumor mill, huh?" he asked. "Kyle's just a Chatty Cathy, ain't he."

"Yeah," Kenny gave a slight laugh.

"Why'd you leave me?" Butters asked softly, though with enough conviction to let Kenny know that he expected an answer. Kenny just pursed his lips and took a deep breath, in and out, through his nose.

"I didn't—" he started, faltered, and then started up again. "I didn't mean to."

Butters frowned at that and braced his hands on his hips, looking off to the side and laughing a little like he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. Because he couldn't.

"So, what" he said. "You just woke up back here one morning and that was that?"

"Yes!" Kenny exclaimed, perking up excitedly like Butters hadn't just slathered on the sarcasm like it was going out of style. "Dude, I know it sounds weird, but yes."

"Well, good thing that's all sorted out," Butters rolled his eyes. "Christ, Kenny, you think I'm a moron?"

"No, no," Kenny said and approached Butters with his hand outstretched before him like some crazed conspiracy theorist. "Think about it: can you remember when I left?"

"No, 'cause you left while I was asleep, y'dickhead!" Butters shouted and slid down the door again, pulling his knees to his chest. "I woke up at Wendy's a-and you were just gone!"

"Butters—"

"You have any idea how bad I just wanted to talk to you?" Butters' voice cracked. He was pretty close to crying again, but he wouldn't give Kenny the satisfaction.

"You… Jesus, you woulda talked me out of staying with my aunt. Y-you woulda told me that she woulda t-te-… that she'd tell my dad I was there. You wo-woulda told me I was an idiot."

"I'd never tell you that," Kenny said, crouching beside Butters and taking one of his hands in both of his. "Butters, think about it: does any of this sound like anything I'd do?"

Butters was about to shout back something mean-spirited, all to make Kenny hurt as much as he'd been hurting, but he'd waited a second too long and was now caught up in thought. He made the mistake of looking Kenny in the eye (_Jesus_, _he had nice eyes_) and now all he could think about was how much Kenny made him smile, how good he made him feel, how much they made each other laugh like the immature little kids they'd once been together.

How fantastic it was to kiss him when everything felt like it was falling to complete and utter shit. How Kenny felt so warm and _right_ against Butters in such a basic way.

"If you didn't mean to leave me then where the hell did you go, huh?" Butters asked softly and Kenny made that face, the one with that smile that meant he knew he'd won. He ran his fingers through Butters' hair and kissed him on the forehead.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For everything. For leaving you, for letting your dad bring you back—"

"Oh, darlin', you couldn'ta helped that if you'd tried," Butters laughed and rested a hand on Kenny's face. "So don't go thinkin' it's your fault. To tell you the truth, I-I think I'd rather have you save here with me back in this… god _forsaken_ shithole than have you run down on the pavement and left for dead in L.A. or somethin'. Anythin' happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."

Something flashed behind Kenny's eyes that made Butters if he'd said the wrong thing. Just as he was about to apologize, Kenny sat down beside him, hip to hip, and ran his fingers through his hair. He was sitting on Butters' good side, but his arm was obstructing his face. Butters never would've even known anything was out of the ordinary if he hadn't heard Kenny's voice a second later, all broken and tight and sounding not unlike he did when they were younger.

"You really," he began through a frustrated sigh. "You can't fucking remember anything, can you."

Butters frowned, watching the holiday commercials flashing across the TV, as he tried to piece together what Kenny could've possibly meant. What the heck was there to remember?

"I remember that you have a nipple ring," Butters finally decided on saying. He'd only seen a flash of it once, and it certainly hadn't been an off-putting discovery. "Though, if you enjoy having someone's tongue and fingers all up in your business as much as you appeared to, you might consider switching sides."

Kenny laughed and shook his head, wiping off his face (he hoped) before Butters could see.

"I don't know why I expected you to," he said. "No one ever does."

Then it clicked. Butters looked away from the TV and gave Kenny one of those looks.

"Oh, Kenny," he said. "Is this the dying thing? Y'know, _I _never even bought that one. Just gotta let those things go. You're eighteen, for God's sake."

"Never fucking mind," Kenny shook his head. "Forget I said anything."

"And how'd you die this time?" Butters smiled and let his head loll back against the door. This was, apparently, the wrong approach.

"Don't fucking patronize me!" Kenny snapped. "You don't like it when people do it to you, what the fuck makes you think I want to hear it?"

Butters felt his stomach turn inside out and he tossed out an immediate apology. Kenny wasn't the type who took a little good natured ribbing to heart like that.

"What's wrong?" he asked, jumping back when Kenny pushed off the floor and stood. He looked a little like he was going to start pacing, then thought better about it, and just decided to sit on the back of the couch. Oh, Butters' mom would have a _fit_ if she were here to see this… but something told Butters that this wasn't the time to politely request that Kenny find somewhere else to brood.

"What's wrong," Kenny nodded, parroting like he hadn't expected Butters to say anything else. "What's wrong is I fucking kill myself, _literally_, for everyone and everything and no one fucking believes it."

"Kenny," Butters tilted his head and stood, approaching Kenny like he would a skittish deer. "It sounds really frustrating and all, but… Seeing someone die is something you'd just remember, all right? A-and I promise that if I ever, god forbid, see you die, I'll never forget it. I don't think I could."

Apparently that was _also_ the wrong thing to say, because Kenny just groaned and thrust himself backward, his legs still hooked over the impeccably placed doily draped across the back of the couch. Butters braced his hands on his knees and nudged them apart just a little.

"Suicide attempt, or just a case of the dizzies?" he asked and Kenny attempted to kick him.

"Go fuck yourself," he squirmed as Butters, smiling, lifted his legs and started unlacing his boots.

"My mother _will_ kill you if she catches you wearing boots in this house," he said, tossing one boot toward the door, and then the other.

"Leave me alone," Kenny scowled and righted himself, contorting until he was laying down on the couch like a normal human being. Butters sat on the armrest and folded his arms.

"So, how _did_ you die this time?" he asked, amending that he really wanted to know when Kenny glared at him.

"A car was going to hit you," Kenny answered curtly. "You were texting and walking, which, by the way, if I ever see you doing again you're a dead man… I pushed you out of the way."

"That was noble of you," Butters nodded. Kenny nodded back.

"Looked at your knees lately?" he asked. Butters raised his eyebrows, because what kind of a question was that? Not that he wasn't used to questions out of the blue, but who sat around just looking at their knees like they had nothing better to do? But now he was at least curious so he rolled up his pajama bottoms and scowled. They looked like they'd been scraped up a while ago, bruises around the wounds yellowing and long since tender. He frowned.

"I don't have any depth perception, Kenny," he explained away. "I fall and bump into stuff and get hurt all the time. Not the first time I've woken up with weird injuries."

"Of course not," Kenny sighed and sat up. "Look, I'm just kind of tired. You think I could crash here? I don't want to go home right now."

"Yeah, sure," Butters nodded and started toward the stairs, pausing to let Kenny get up and follow. "You don't wanna spend Christmas Eve with your family?"

"You didn't either," Kenny shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Kevin's home. I don't feel like dealing with him tonight."

Butters stopped at the top of the stairs and let Kenny keep walking down toward his room. That would explain why he'd been acting so weird; if Butters had a brother, and he'd done to him what Kevin had done to Kenny and Karen, Butters didn't imagine he'd have too much to say to him either.

"Jeez," he said and caught up with Kenny outside his room. "You all right?"

"Spiffing," Kenny shot back and walked right over to the bed without preamble. He flopped down face down, like Butters had done earlier, and it looked a little like he was going to just fall asleep like that. Then he rolled over and muttered something about feeling like he was going insane.

"You and me both," Butters sighed and went to lie beside him. "He say anything to you?" Kenny just shrugged and stared up at the ceiling above them.

"Apparently he doesn't care if I'm queer anymore," he said. "So long as I don't hit on him."

Butters made a little noise of disgust in the back of his throat that made Kenny laugh as he brought his fingers up to Kenny's hair in an attempt to smooth it out. It felt softer than it had before, less frayed, less matted down with grease and oil and grime. It was actually kind of nice to play with now.

"We're all just clamoring for his seed," Butters said, which made Kenny gag just a little. "It's a good thing he knows that. Maybe he'll start booby-trapping his room so you don't have the chance to siphon it out of him while he sleeps."

"He's a meth dealer, not a 1920s villain," Kenny laughed a little bit before he practically melted against Butters, molding to him almost entirely as he drifted off to sleep. Butters buried his nose in Kenny's hair—no soap, no sweat, no nothing… just Kenny. It was one of those smells that made Butters' heart skip a beat in anticipation. He held Kenny for a while, letting him snooze against his side until he had to readjust to let the blood flow back into his arm. Kenny made a noise of protest, but Butters just shushed him and pecked him on the lips.

"Scoot up to the pillows," he said. "Let me spoon you good and proper."

Kenny nodded and sleepily obeyed as Butters went to grab a sweater out of his closet.

"Can I be the little spoon?" he asked through a yawn, and Butters laughed.

"I'll be your big spoon any day, darlin'," he hummed happily and slid back into bed behind Kenny. It wasn't ideal, being that Butters was a good few inches shorter than him, but any chance he had to hold Kenny against him was automatically aces in his book.

They woke like that a few hours later, Butters only coming into consciousness when Kenny started shaking with sleepy laughter.

"What?" Butters yawned.

"Dude, you have the biggest hard-on," Kenny rolled out of Butters' arms and started laughing. Butters wasn't entirely sure of why it was so funny, since the way Kenny's hips were tilted ever so slightly off of the bed indicated that he was in the same predicament himself, but he laughed all the same anyway.

"I… I don't get it," he finally admitted when Kenny started laughing harder.

"Me neither," he gasped between laughs, and if Butters didn't know any better he would've said that Kenny was high off his ass. He just let Kenny keep laughing, though, and may have rolled his eyes when Kenny almost fell off of the bed.

"Do you," Kenny started once his fit was contained enough. "Do you ever have those moments of realization, like… you knew you wanted something, but you're only just now realizing how ridiculous it is?"

Butters cocked his head as Kenny started laughing again.

"What's so ridiculous?" he asked, kind of peeved, but not so much so that his erection had become any less so. This was probably because he could see that Kenny was still tenting his sweats and it was getting harder and harder not to reach out and touch it. Kenny's laughter died down as he buried his face in Butters' pillows and let out a sigh. He mumbled something into them that Butters couldn't hear, so he climbed on top of Kenny, sitting on him so his hips were forced to rub against the bed, and twisted Kenny's head around so his lips were unobstructed.

"What was that?" he asked.

"I want you to fuck me," Kenny repeated, more sincerely this time, and Butters felt his gut go cold. He…

it wasn't that he…

it was just.

"What?"

Kenny rolled over under Butters and looked up at him with that unsettlingly earnest look of his. Butters could feel Kenny pressed hard against him, which didn't help him too much with the level-headedness and the thinking. He felt Kenny's hands come to rest on his sides and rub small circles over his hip bones with his thumbs. Jesus, he couldn't deal with Kenny's hands being on him right now.

"Please," he heard Kenny whisper softly. "I want you to. I want to feel you inside me."

Butters made an involuntary noise in the back of his throat and slumped forward. Truth be told, he'd only done it a few times before, mostly because he wasn't so great at it. He normally turned out to be such a spaz that he only ended up flailing on top of someone until his body had enough decency to end the charade and be done with it. But Kenny was looking up at him now, running his fingers up and down his arms, and _aw, Jesus_.

He unzipped Kenny's sweatshirt and tossed it over the edge of the bed, and Kenny did the same. It was too cold to take off their shirts still, and if Butters looked over at the window he would have seen that it had started snowing again, which of course meant he was going to get hollered at if he didn't turn up the heater before his parents got home.

But the thermostat was all the way downstairs and he wasn't going to do that.

He did, however, scramble off of Kenny and hang over the side of the bed so he could grab an old shoe box from underneath. He pulled out a condom and a small bottle of cheap lube he'd gone to buy a long while ago, back when buying sex stuff still made him pink in the face, and tossed them on the pillow beside Kenny.

His hands were shaking.

God, why were they _shaking_?

"Ke-Kenny, I'm not so sure this is a good idea," he shook his head. "Want me to ride you? I-I'm awful good at that."

Kenny sat up and brought Butters into a kiss. Oh God, that felt just about every kind of right that ever could be felt. He kissed back, tongue sweeping through Kenny's mouth, memorizing every nook and cranny that he could find. He loved Kenny's mouth, his tongue, the way his lips molded to Butters' perfectly… heck, he even loved his crooked teeth.

"Lay back," Butters whispered against Kenny's lips, their breath mingling together as Butters pushed lightly at Kenny's shoulders. Kenny grinned and wrapped his arms around Butters' neck, pulling them down so they were both lying flat against the bed. Butters kissed him again for good measure and slipped his hands up under Kenny's—Kyle's, actually, now that he thought about it—shirt. His stomach was taut and lean under Butters' fingertips, and even twitched as Butters grazed over a few more sensitive parts. Kenny thought he was too scrawny, but Butters kind of liked it.

He kind of liked everything about Kenny, though. He liked Kenny's face, his neck, his collar bone, his chest… Butters pushed Kenny's shirt up under his arms and ran his fingernails over Kenny's skin. Kenny whined and let his head loll back against Butters' pillow, his breath catching in his throat when Butters reached down between them and ran his finger up Kenny's clothed erection.

"Shit," Kenny gave a breathy laugh and Butters took it as a good sign. He hooked his fingers under the elastic of Kenny's sweatpants and tugged them down just enough so Kenny could wriggle out of them and kick them off of the bed. Butters bent down and kissed him again, a little sloppier than before. Butters was pretty sure he didn't care. He buried his face in Kenny's neck, licking and sucking as he reached into Kenny's boxers and wrapped his hand around him.

"Jesus," Butters said softly, looking up. "You're real hard."

Kenny gave him a look almost as though to say 'uh, _duh_', but didn't bother to voice the sentiment. He just thrust up into Butters' hand and sucked his lips in between his. Butters whimpered when he felt Kenny's hands on his backside again, only this time Kenny had returned to free Butters of his pants and undies. Butters quickly leveled the playing field, ridding Kenny of his boxers and running his fingers up Kenny's legs, over the inside of his thighs. He reached over to the side and grabbed the small bottle off of the pillow.

"You have lube?" Kenny asked with an air of surprise as Butters cracked the top and flipped him off, squirting a liberal amount of the thick liquid onto that finger and the rest. Kenny laughed. "Leopold Stotch, you cheeky little fuck."

"You're pretty mouthy for someone who's about to get his ass fucked, mister," Butters gave a wry smile and ran one of his slick fingers up Kenny's erection. As expected, that was about the most effective method of getting Kenny to shut his mouth he'd ever seen.

"Ha-have I ever told you how much I love it when you curse?" Kenny asked, and Butters moved his fingers down to tease around Kenny's entrance.

"You sure this is okay?" he asked.

"Christ, you wanna fuck me or not?" Kenny laughed, instantly silenced when Butters pushed a slippery digit inside of him. This was the part Butters loved, seeing someone so collected come apart at the mercy of his fingers. Whoever had done this to Kenny before obviously hadn't known what they were doing… either that, or they were terrible at reading facial cues. Odd, being that Kenny had one of the most expressive faces out there. Again, probably to make up for spending most of his childhood masked behind that stupid parka. He had to communicate somehow.

It occurred to Butters that they may not even be alone anymore, being that they'd fallen asleep and all, but it wasn't likely he'd get Kenny to be quiet; Kenny was spectacularly awful at keeping quiet, especially once you found his prostate. He made thick, guttural noises deep in his throat, grabbed at the top of Butters' headboard, and bucked up for more. It made Butters smile.

"You like this this much," he began. "And you only suspect that you're half-gay?"

"Shut up," Kenny whined, his face blushing bright red, and clenched around Butters' fingers. That was all the hint Butters needed. If his parents were home, if they could hear any of this, Butters was past the point of caring. He needed this—they both needed this.

He withdrew his fingers and grabbed for the condom. His fingers, as it turned out, were far too slippery to do any good, so Kenny had to take to the task himself. He ripped open the flimsy foil packet and tossed it to the side. Butters may have gone cross-eyed when Kenny rolled the condom down onto him. He grabbed bottle again, slicking himself up as Kenny watched, all open-mouthed and glassy-eyed. Then they caught each other's gaze and looked at each other for a few moments, neither sure how to proceed.

"Haven't really done this much," Butters confessed and grabbed a pillow. He gave Kenny a light smack on the hip so he'd lift up and let Butters prop him up for easier access. "I'll try not to—I mean, I won't hurt you or nothin'."

Kenny just rolled his eyes and brought Butters into another kiss before he flopped back onto the pillows. Butters swallowed the lump in his throat and lifted Kenny's knees, positioning himself, and, with a deep breath, pushed in.

Kenny took a minute to adjust, and Butters made sure to whisper a few words of encouragement and kiss him all over his neck and face, but otherwise he was pretty gone. He waited for what felt like years before Kenny gave him the okay to move, but before he got that, Kenny pulled him down close, lips to his ears, and whispered.

"I'm alive, I'm here… make me feel it."

Butters didn't need to be told twice, even if he wasn't entirely sure of what Kenny was talking about. He just chocked it up to the simple fact that people said weird shit during sex. He captured Kenny's lips in his as he pulled out almost all the way and thrust back in, hard enough to jolt Kenny out of their kiss and make his face contort in a rather pained expression.

"Shit," Butters said and moved to pull out again, but Kenny stopped him. "I'm real sorry. Look, this was a bad idea. Lemme just—"

"Fuck, shut up," Kenny whined and fisted his hands in his hair. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not—"

"It feels good, you twat," Kenny shook his head. "Just… build up to it, okay?"

"Right," Butters nodded. "Can I go again?"

Kenny nodded and rocked his hips up against Butters. It took a few minutes, but they managed to establish a rhythm. Butters was still having a little trouble not being too eager, but Kenny seemed to be adjusting well. He was meeting each and every one of Butters' thrusts with matched enthusiasm, and _good Lord_, that face he made when he hit his prostate. Butters hoped it was one of those things that would stay in his memory forever, because it was way too gorgeous to forget.

As Butters' thrusts picked up pace, Kenny looked less and less like he was still on this plane of existence. His hands had moved from Butters' ass to his hair and now to the headboard, which Butters only realized he'd started doing to keep from moving any further up the bed.

"Shit," Butters gave a laugh and stilled for a second.

"Don't stop," Kenny whined, still thrusting back against Butters.

"Don't wanna send you sailin' through the wall," Butters murmured, resuming his arrhythmic thrusts as he bent down to press a kiss to Kenny's sweaty forehead. A few more minutes and Kenny was arching off of the bed, flushed all across his face and neck, and clenching around Butters. Butters reached between them and began jerking Kenny in time with his thrusts, absolutely reeling when Kenny came with a groan. He was quick to follow, any noises he could've made swallowed in one of Kenny's kisses.

They lay there for a moment, panting spent against each other, until Butters rolled off of Kenny and tossed the condom into the trashcan beside his bed. It was silent for a little too long, but Butters wasn't sure he minded too much. He didn't feel like he had to talk with Kenny; they could both just sit there and be comfortable with each other and that was that.

"Y'holdin' up okay?" Butters finally asked, just to make sure Kenny hadn't fallen asleep on him, and was met with a warm, satiated hum.

"You want to get out of here?" Kenny asked languidly, and Butters took a few moments to realize that he was talking about the entire town and not just their current location.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Didn't work out great the last time. Haven't ruled it out. You?"

Kenny nodded and rolled over.

"I wanna get the fuck away from these people," he said. "For good this time, if possible."

Butters hummed a little agreement and rolled over to look at him. He laughed when he saw the streaks of come soaking through Kyle's shirt. He wasn't entirely sure of what this warm feeling was in his chest, only that it surfaced whenever he was with Kenny whenever they were like this. He grabbed one of Kenny's hands in his and sighed.

"Just… Look, if you promise to stick with me this time, will you keep to it?"

Kenny pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow.

"Don't put me in a position where I have to save your ass and you've got a deal."


End file.
